Case Study: No-Bake Foundry

Challenge

A Midwest no-bake foundry had two objectives to improve their business– to increase production rates and develop larger mold sizing (5 foot square). In review of their existing process, the manual shakeout operation was determined to be a limiting factor to process the higher melt capacity and variety of mold sizes required.

Approach

General Kinematics reviewed the application and provided conceptual drawings to handle the mold sizing and production rates, while meeting customer objectives of location and serviceability of auxiliary items (crane, through traffic, metal delivery).

Solution

A twin-motor two-mass shakeout was utilized to expose the casting for removal, allowing sand to pass below to the VM-120 VIBRA-MILL® .  By providing an angle as the primary wear point on the deck, General Kinematics allowed the customer three specific advantages:

1. An inexpensive and simple replaceable wear item.
2. A surface contact point which would “cut” the no-bake sand to quickly break apart.
3. Adjustability (via replacement of the angle to a different size leg) to affect the gap and allow the customer to either retain the chills on the upper deck with a smaller gap, or increase the gap to allow chills to pass through to be reclaimed in the attrition mill.

Results

The system’s efficiency has exceeded the customer’s production capacity, allowing for the shakeout to be run intermittently rather than continuous, while only requiring basic preventative maintenance to provide the high level of performance needed in this foundry.

General Kinematics 2013 USA