51 COMMUNICATION ISSUE Simulation has proven to be a very useful tool for predicting what is going to happen on the shop floor, before tooling is made. Every foundry that uses simulation can benefit from fine tuning their input data, based on actual results from their own castings. Figure 1. Slice through the left casting, showing shrinkage Figure 2. Slice through the right casting, showing shrinkage. Continued on page 53 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 Shop Floor Communication Improves Simulation Results 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. This was a real problem job for the foundry, as you can see from Figures 1 and 2, 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 critical to identify which simulation inputs where important and what
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