Other nominees included: Jose Lopez, Gilberth Aleman, Dave Eveland, Nico Combarro, Jorge Serrano, Ben Hatch, Xenia Ponce, Olivia Schechterly, Nelson Lemus, Dave Straub, Kris Young and Edwin Ramirez.

B

enton Foundry held its 30th annual company picnic on Saturday, August 8th at Knoebels. It was a hot summer day with lots of sun and fun. We had a nice turnout, with over 240 attending. There were lots of great prizes, many of which were donated by Benton’s vendors. We enjoyed each other’s company, good food, games and rides. A wonderful time was had by all and a huge thank you goes out to all that participated in making this event possible.

O

ur last newsletter covered our Molding Department. Phase 7 is focused on our Melt Department. A 10,000-pound charge is made up of steel scrap (rail chop, rotors, punching, axle nubs, and busheling), internal returns (gating, risers, and scrap castings), pig iron, and alloys. The specific recipe (one for ductile iron and one for gray iron) stating the exact weights of each input material are predetermined on a weekly basis, based on chemistry (controlled manganese and sulfur levels in ductile iron) and inventory levels. The gating gets run through a “gate crusher”, producing denser charge material and in turn lowering the required electricity to melt. This material is melted down in coreless induction furnaces, which use a water-cooled copper coil to apply heat magnetically. The iron in the furnace gets heated to 2,700 degrees Fahrenheit, gets a sample taken from it for chemical analysis, and slagged, removing impurities that float to the top of the bath. Once chemistry is confirmed to be within specification, the iron is tapped into a 5,000 lb. tundish ladle. The 5,000 lb. tundish ladle then distributes iron to pouring ladles, which get their own alloys based on the grade of iron and section thickness of the jobs being produced at the time of the tap. The iron pourers move their specified pouring lines, take a temperature and remove slag again from their ladles, then pour molds at 2,600 degrees Fahrenheit.

We currently have 4 coreless induction furnaces.
(2) 4 metric ton (approx. 9,000 lbs.)
(2) 10 metric ton (approx. 23,000 lbs.)

Bo Boston is the Melt Department Supervisor on Day Shift. He has been at Benton Foundry since 2001. Bo has worked in various jobs within the melt department over the years including pouring, tundish, furnace and shakeout, before he took his current position. Bo resides in the Berwick area. In his spare time he likes to play golf, watch sports and spend time with his girlfriend Ashley and her three children. Also, keeping him company are two dogs and one cat.

Ryan Keeler is the Melt Department Assistant Supervisor on Day Shift. He has been at Benton Foundry since 2020. Ryan began his career in the core room operating a core machine. Next he moved into the melt department doing various jobs like pouring, furnace operator etc. and then moved into his current position. Ryan resides in the Benton area with his wife, Miranda and their two children. In his spare time, he enjoys outdoor activities with his wife and kids (hunting, fishing and going for walks and hikes) and attending his kids’ sporting events.

Ray Campbell is the Melt Department Supervisor on Night Shift. He has been at Benton Foundry since 2010. He began his career in the grinding room as a cleaner operator then to the melt department as a pourer, crane operator and furnace operator then moved into his current postion. Ray lives in Benton with his wife Linda. In his spare time, Ray enjoys spending time with his grandson and working in his garage.

Each shift in the Melt department employs 10-15 employees.

The next phase will cover the Grinding Department.

F

rom the moment a digital alarm rouses you in the morning until you rest your head at night, your day is seamlessly enabled by technology. Screens light up on command. Voices answer questions. Devices anticipate your needs before you speak them. We credit this frictionless existence to brilliant software, visionary developers, and sleek interface design.

But the great illusion of the 21st century is that our world runs on code.

In reality, it runs on physical geology—highly refined, deeply excavated chunks of the earth’s crust. While the broader markets obsess over AI and the cloud, the hard truth is that every digital convenience is anchored to a massive, extractive supply chain. We have advanced technologically, but human survival remains fundamentally unchanged: we still derive much of what we do from minerals mined from the earth.

To understand how deeply we rely on the planet, we must look beneath the digital veneer at the five elemental pillars keeping modern civilization alive.

1. The Personal Connectivity Hub

We carry massive feats of engineering with us every single day—smartphones, laptops, tablets, smartwatches—treating them as if they are magic. In truth, any one of these devices is a highly sophisticated, miniature mine. Manufacturing a single smartphone requires several dozen chemical elements—an extraordinary share of the periodic table for a device that fits in your pocket, and larger devices draw on the same geological palette in even greater quantities. This marvel is built across the following core components:

• The Screen: Crafted from silica (quartz sand) and bauxite, the glass is layered with materials derived from sphalerite, gallium, and indium. Indium forms the invisible, conductive film that allows the screen to register the touch of a finger.
• The Battery: A lightweight powerhouse built from lithium, cobalt, and graphite to safely manage dense energy storage.
• The Brain (Electronics): The microprocessor that thinks for your device begins as silicon, refined from common quartz sand into near-perfect wafers. Across it runs a web of copper, silver, and gold to carry every signal. And holding it steady is tantalum— wrung from coltan ore mined largely in central Africa—which stores and smooths the flow of electricity so delicate circuits never falter.
• Speakers and Physical Body: Sound and vibration are driven by ultra-powerful permanent magnets built from rare earth elements—neodymium, dysprosium, and praseodymium. Denser still is tungsten, whose weight powers the buzz of every haptic vibration, while metals like aluminum and titanium give the body its structure.

For all its sophistication, though, this device is useless on its own. It is merely the final stop in a far larger system—one that dwarfs the hardware in your hand.

2. Infrastructure and Utilities

While portable gadgets capture our attention, the invisible infrastructure keeping society functioning day to day is far more resource intensive.

The most critical convenience in human history is the modern power grid. Electricity is entirely useless if it cannot be transported efficiently from where it is generated to where it is consumed. The entire global grid relies heavily on copper. Because of its high abundance and low resistance, copper remains the gold standard for electrical conductivity, delivering power directly from a massive generation plant into a home wall outlet with minimal energy loss.

As renewable energy continues to expand its share of electricity generation around the globe, this geological reliance changes but does not diminish. Solar panels draw on high-purity silicon and the silver printed across each cell in fine lines to collect and carry the current, while wind turbines demand immense quantities of neodymium and dysprosium—the rare earths that form the powerful permanent magnets inside the generators, turning the motion of the wind into electrical current.

That same power feeds the vast network that carries our data. When you connect at home over Wi-Fi, your router transmits through gallium arsenide chips paired with copper antennas. That signal feeds into submarine fiber-optic cables—ultra-pure silica glass cores, wrapped in steel armor and carrying a copper conductor to power the repeaters along the way.

Finally, the data reaches vast data centers: warehouses packed with silicon network switches, circuit boards plated in gold, palladium, and platinum, and thick copper and aluminum busbars distributing enormous amounts of electricity.

This heavy reliance extends to municipal water systems. Delivering safe, pressurized water and managing sanitation requires an extensive metallurgical feat. Municipal water mains require heavy-duty iron and steel, but they depend on zinc for galvanization to prevent internal rust, and copper or stainless steel for residential plumbing. It is an invisible network of metals keeping sanitation separate from survival.

3. Transportation and Mobility

The ability to move people and goods across vast distances in hours rather than weeks defines the pace of modern commerce and lifestyle. Today, the automotive and aerospace industries are undergoing a massive technological shift, and geology is driving the entire transition.

The rise of electric vehicles (EVs) has completely rewritten the mineral playbook. Where a traditional internal combustion engine relies on steel, aluminum, and a small amount of platinum in the catalytic converter, an EV shifts the focus entirely to battery chemistry—specifically lithium, cobalt, and graphite. Lithium acts as the lightweight champion of energy storage, while cobalt is required to stabilize the cathode, preventing the battery from overheating or catching fire during rapid charging.

Global logistics and aviation rely on an entirely different suite of heavy elements. Jet engines require advanced superalloys made with nickel, cobalt, and titanium to withstand the extreme temperatures and pressures of high-altitude, long-haul flight. Without these specific metals, the turbine blades inside a jet engine would literally melt under the heat required for propulsion.

4. Healthcare and Life Expansion

The most profound impact of technology is not convenience or speed, but the extension of human life itself—and, with it, the more than 8 billion people now drawing on the earth’s resources. A century and a half ago, global life expectancy at birth was a staggering 30 years. You would have awakened to sunlight, relied on an outhouse for sanitation, hauled water from a nearby stream, and illuminated the night with expensive kerosene. Labor was purely manual or animal, and most of the day was dominated by sheer necessity.

With modern technology, global lifespan has more than doubled to roughly 73 years, with many developed nations pushing well past 80. This monumental shift separated work, home, and leisure more clearly, occurring in three distinct, technologically driven
waves—each resting on a deeper foundation of extracted materials than the last.

• Wave 1 (Late 1800s – Early 1900s): Made possible by the invisible utilities we use every day—clean running water, modern sewage systems, and food refrigeration. This was fundamentally a triumph of metal: the iron and steel mains, zinc-galvanized pipes, and copper plumbing described earlier laid the bedrock infrastructure that created the first massive spike in human lifespan by conquering child mortality.
• Wave 2 (Mid-1900s): The Medical Revolution, defined by the discovery of penicillin, the mass production of antibiotics, and widespread vaccination programs that defeated infectious diseases like tuberculosis and pneumonia. These breakthroughs depended not only on chemistry but on an industrial base of stainless-steel manufacturing and a refrigerated “cold chain”—the copper, aluminum, and specialized coolants that kept vaccines viable from factory to clinic.
• Wave 3 (Late 1900s – Present): Modern Management, utilizing high-tech cardiovascular medicine, stroke interventions, and advanced cancer therapies to turn once-fatal acute conditions into manageable, chronic ones.

This modern wave is bound strictly to specialized mineral resources. Consider an MRI machine: to generate the massive magnetic fields required to align hydrogen atoms in human tissue without a single incision, it relies on superconducting magnets made of a niobium-titanium alloy, kept functional by liquid helium cooling. On a smaller scale, lifesavers like pacemakers use titanium for their outer casings—entirely biocompatible, resisting rejection and corrosion inside the body—powered by dense lithium-iodine batteries built to last a decade.

But the deeper story is one of sheer multiplication. A century and a half ago, roughly 1.3 billion people each lived about thirty years, most of it in material simplicity. Today, more than 8 billion people live past seventy—and each of those longer lives is vastly more resource-intensive than the one it replaced. Every additional decade of life is a decade of hospital visits, imaging scans, implanted devices, refrigerated medicines, and the vast metal-and-silicon apparatus of modern care. We have not simply added more people to the planet; we have added more people, living far longer, each drawing on a deeper well of the earth’s minerals than any generation before them. The extension of human life and the growing number of people on earth are, in the end, among the most resource hungry achievements in our history.

~By Jim Puplava, CFP®, CTS™, CES™, President and CEO
~ Financial Sense Wealth Management

This article wll be continued in the 4th Quarter of 2026 newsletter.