Arbomex

Founded in 1977, Arbomex is a 100% Mexican company focused on producing crankshafts, camshafts, and other casted parts for the light- and heavy-vehicle segments, as well as for the aftermarket. With two plants in Guanajuato, the company has become one of the main Tier 1 providers, supplying North America, Europe, and Asia. Additionally, it is one of the only Mexican companies competing with the worldwide leaders in the segment. Among its current clients, Arbomex has relationships with some of the most important OEMs and OE suppliers in the market, including Daimler Trucks, AAM, Kawasaki, Copeland, and Trane. Within the light vehicle industry, the company has worked for 35 years with the now FCA Group, 25 years with Volkswagen, six years with GM, and one year with the recently established Mazda plant in Salamanca. Both of the company’s plants are located close to each other in the region of Celaya. The first facility is in Celaya itself, with a total workforce of 543 employees, while the second plant is in the neighboring Apaseo with 425 people supporting its operations. Apart from camshafts and crankshafts, these manufacturing sites produce shafts, axle sleeves, carriers, brackets, water pumps, cylinder sleeves, and eccentric shafts.

One of the main advantages that Arbomex can offer its clients is its fully-integrated manufacturing process. Arbomex has access to Magma software, computer- aided design, computer-aided manufacturing, and casting flow digital simulation through SIMTEC. The company is completely involved in the customer’s design process, working on simultaneous engineering to obtain a functional prototype. After that, mass production relies on three different activities: foundry, tooling, and machining. After the prototype is accepted, Arbomex designs the tools and molds needed to manufacture these products on a larger scale. The components are then cast and machined it in order to obtain the specific dimensions required by the OEM. In its foundry, Arbomex has two induction furnaces and an installed capacity of 32,000 tonnes of metal per year. Its no-bake molding processes can deliver 80 sand molds per hour through four pouring lines, for parts between 1.5kg and 15kg. Furthermore, it has core manufacturing capabilities, obtained with a shell-and-cold-box process. Additionally, the lost-foam process supplies 35 molds per hour with eight foam-molding machines, designed for components between 2kg and 150kg.

Arbomex is one of the three worldwide top suppliers with an integrated foundry and machining process, giving the company the capacity to promptly respond to any demands from its customers. This approach has additional advantages in terms of costs and logistics, given that the client can obtain the design and the final product from the same supplier. Overall, Arbomex can produce 6 million components annually, with an available capacity for 800,000 more. The company currently works with nodular and gray iron alloys, although it also has experience with compacted graphite and HiSiMo cast iron, which is used specially for high-temperature components.