EDITOR'S COMMENT
Huge investments to modernize the entire supply chain to make foundries competitive, the challenge
The year 2008 has been the beginning of the new era of the Indian foundry industry segment. As per the market indications, this is the year when a plethora of world foundry men will be coming down to the Indian soil, in order to throw up enormous business opportunity to the country’s foundry segment. This is the time when the Indian foundry men and the entire business circles as a whole will truly mark the spirit of India’s emergence as a force to reckon with. Indian foundry men, as they say it, are quite accustomed to the crisis in the industry and the crisis management as well.
News Corner
- Industrial growth trend in India
- India’s exports grew by 35% in October 2007
TECHNOLOGY FOCUS
Methoding of Cast Iron - Automotive Castings
Complexity of the melting shop is compensated to a large extent in the methoding section. Cast irons have excellent fluidity, so can form complex shapes without much difficulty. They have much less solidification shrinkage then steel. Many of the sections exhibit soundness without feeders. In fact a mothod engineer from steel foundry must envy his counterpart from graphite iron foundry. The gray irons display very little shrinkage defects.
Casting Stimulization & Optimization: Benefits, bottlenecks and best practices
Casting simulation has become a powerful tool to visualise mould filling, solidification and cooling, and to predict the location of
internal defects such as shrinkage porosity, sand inclusions, and cold shuts. It can be used for troubleshooting existing castings
and for developing new castings without shop-floor trials. This paper describes the benefits of casting simulation (both tangible and intangible), bottlenecks (technical and resource-related), and some best practices to overcome the bottlenecks. These are based on an annual survey of computer applications in foundries carried out during 2001-2006, which received feedback from about 150 casting engineers and detailed discussions involving visits to over 100 foundries. While new developments such as automatic optimisation of method design are coming up, a national initiative must ensure that the technology is available to even small and medium foundries in remote areas.
SPECIAL COVERAGE
Wet Abrasive wear characteristics of austempered ductile iron for cryogenic treatment
In the present investigation, ductile iron castings conforming to Indian standard specifications IS 400/12 grade were first subjected to austempering heat treatment cycle and then soaked in a liquid Nitrogen bath maintained at - 196oC for 24 hours duration. Microstructure, hardness and wet abrasive wear properties of the as-cast ductile iron, austempered ductile iron and cryogenictreated austempered ductile iron specimens were studied. The results of the investigation indicate that there is a
remarkable improvement in hardness values and a good improvement in wear resistance is noticed on subjecting the ADI castings to deep Cryogenic treatment.
TECHNOLOGY/PROCESS REVIEW
Gas-fired cupola: An option to enhance melting efficiency in foundries
The cupola is The cupola is most conventional unit for melting in foundries accouting for the estimated production of 70% cast iron in the world and approximately 80% in India. It makes use of coke as fuel. The combustion of coke generates gaseous products containing oxides of carbon and sulphur. These oxides have proven harmful effect to the environment. Further, use of coke in
conventional cupola ejects a significant quantity of suspended particulate matter (SPM) in the atmosphere. All these together
have caused several pollution problems in the vicinity of an operating unit. Public awareness and pressure from environmental
activists have forced foundry owners to look into the pollution aspects and its maximum mitigations.
TECHNOLOGY/PROCESS REVIEW
Multiple functions of antioxidants in Carbon - Containing Castables
Carbon source and antioxidants play decisive roles in developing carbon containing castables. The addition of different types of carbon into castables has been considered for a long time as a controversial challenge1. To tackle the problem, caused by introducing flake graphite into castables, modified flake graphite pellets produced by extrusion (EG) have been developed. The application of pellets has significantly reduced the negative effects of graphite on rheological properties and consequently to other related relevant properties of carbon containing castables.
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