foundry

Noun

foundry (countable and uncountable, plural foundries)

1. A facility that melts metals in special furnaces and pours the molten metal into molds to make products. Foundries are usually specified according to the type of metal dealt with: iron foundry, brass foundry, etc.
   • So after learning a great deal about iron founding and much more about pike fishing, one regretfully took leave of a shop full of kindly characters and proceeded to a worse lot of odours in the brass foundry. […] So after a short spell in the brass foundry the wisest course was to follow with a...1944 November and December, A Former Pupil, “Some Memories of Crewe Works—II”, in Railway Magazine, page 343
2. The act, process, or art of casting metals; founding.
3. A plant that produces chips out of semiconductors in the microelectronics industry.
   • Chang gained trust by allaying fears that TSMC would steal designs, as pure-play foundries have no use of them; TSMC stealing from chip designers would be like a printing press stealing plots from novelists.2023 March 21, Virginia Heffernan, “I Saw the Face of God in a Semiconductor Factory”, in WIRED

   Synonyms:

   fab