Simple Solutions That Work! Issue 11

S imulation has proven to be a very useful tool for predicting what is going to happen on the shop floor, before tooling is made. That being said, every foundry that uses simulation can benefit from fine tuning their input data, based on actual results from their own castings. Normally, this is a simple process, using data from previous casting failures. This article provides a case study of how this process is typically carried out. Our example is a ductile iron rotor casting made using a vertically parted molding machine. Figure 1 shows the pattern layout. This was a real problem job for the foundry, as you can see from Figures 2 and 3, which show slices through the left and right castings, respectively. In each casting you can see massive shrinkage. This was occurring in almost 40% of the current production, so it was imperative to identify which simulation inputs where important and what were the best settings to use for that foundry, in order to accurately predict solidification results, and then using that information to solve the problem. When we went back into the production records, they showed DAVID C. SCHMIDT Vice President FINITE SOLUTIONS, INC. ARTICLE TAKEAWAYS: • Simulation is an Excellent Predictor of Shop Floor Results • Fine Tuning is a Normal Practice for each Foundry • Problem Castings are Useful for the Tuning Process FINE TUNING SIMULATION INPUT DATA FOR THE SPECIFIC FOUNDRY 50 Figure 1. Pattern layout for a ductile iron rotor casting in a vertically parted mold.