Evaluation of Cooling Performance of an Additive Manufactured Gravity Die Casting Mold with Conformal Cooling Channel

A cooling channel with an optimized design provides not only high throughput with gravity die casting, but also guarantees product quality. A conformal cooling channel (CC) whose structure follows the shapes or surfaces of the mold cavity has attracted great attention in the die casting industry, because it allows rapid and uniform cooling. However, implementing conformal cooling remains highly challenging, because the complicated geometries of CC are difficult to form using conventional fabrication methods such as drilling and milling. In recent years, advances in additive manufacturing (AM) technology have made it possible to fabricate products with complex and elaborate structures. In this paper, a gravity die casting mold with CC was designed and built using AM technology. The cooling channel performance was estimated and evaluated using an Al-Si-Cu alloy casting simulation and die casting experiments, respectively. The casting simulation results showed that the cooling performance of the CC was enhanced by ca. 10% compared with that of a conventional cooling channel. The experimental cooling performance of the CC improved by ca. 8% compared to that of a conventional cooling channel, and the increment in performance was consistent with the simulation results. In addition, microstructural evidence clarified that the effective cooling performance of CC could be attributed to the decrement (ca. 17%) of the secondary dendrite arm spacing (SDAS) of the Al-Si-Cu alloy. In this research, AM technology provides a novel way to fabricate functionally superior CC molds that are hardly producible with traditional methods.

Shrinkage Elimination in Casting of GG30 Grade Cast Iron Impellor by using Pro-cast Software& Finite Elemental Analysis by Meshcast Software

There are 100+ submersible pump manufacturers in Rajkot Engineering Cluster. So, there are 100 plus foundry engaged in casting of cast iron impellor for submersible pump. They face shrinkage defect after casting and about 10 % rejection is because of shrinkage.[1] So in order to reduce this defect casting simulation software is very helpful. By using Pro-Cast simulation software mould of impellor is imported in Pro-Cast software and by applying sand mould condition, pouring temperature, pouring time etc. are put into the software, and finally result shows the areas of impellor where shrinkage chances are more.

Simulation and Validation of Castings in Shop Floor

Production of sound casting demands a thorough understanding of whole casting process. But still, defects and rejection of castings are ubiquitous because in general, the designer lacks domain knowledge about casting processes and hardly have any methodology to find out the parameters that produce sound casting. Casting simulation software simulates the way how casting engineers decide the casting process in a virtual platform and also analyzes each decision to point out the design modifications needed to enhance the quality of casting as well as reduce lead time, tooling and manufacturing costs. The application of simulation software enables us to say, “Get it right, the first time and every time”. Simulation software can be very helpful in calculating tedious formulas, constructing solid modeling which will be helpful to visualise the actual situation like core/mould assembly, gating and feeding arrangements with the main casting before going into actual practice. It can be adopted for troubleshooting existing castings, and for producing new castings without or minimum shop-floor trials. This chapter illustrates the advantages of casting simulation (both tangible and intangible), bottlenecks (technical and resource-related), and some best practices to subdue the bottlenecks. In this chapter some of the live examples have been cited to understand the process logically and scientifically.