Foundry Definition

In simplified terms, a foundry is a factory where castings are produced by melting metal, pouring liquid
metal into a mold, then allowing it to solidify. Even if you have never been to a foundry, or even know
what one looks like, you are surrounded by the metal castings they produce. There is a good chance that
you are reading this less than 10 feet away from one.

Foundries don’t just produce metal products for engine, railroad, or pipe components. They also form
components for machines that are required to make many of the essential consumer products we
depend on. 90 percent of all manufactured goods rely on metal castings.

The Casting Process

The Casting Process

In order to understand a foundry, you need to understand the casting process. The general steps
involved in casting are patternmaking, molding, melting, pouring, ejection, cleaning, fettling, and
inspection.

The final casting shape corresponds with the mold it is poured into, so molds are carefully shaped with a
pattern – a wood or metal replica of the object to be cast. The most common mold material is silica
sand, but they can be produced from a number of different materials depending on the casting metal
and method being used

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CASTING SERVICES

What is a Foundry?

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Foundries are facilities that produce metal castings and offer casting-related services

Metal being tapped out of a foundry furnace into a pouring ladle

Foundries are responsible for our current standard of living and industrial development, but most of us
know next to nothing about them. So what is a foundry?

Foundry Definition

In simplified terms, a foundry is a factory where castings are produced by melting metal, pouring liquid
metal into a mold, then allowing it to solidify. Even if you have never been to a foundry, or even know
what one looks like, you are surrounded by the metal castings they produce. There is a good chance that
you are reading this less than 10 feet away from one.

Foundries don’t just produce metal products for engine, railroad, or pipe components. They also form
components for machines that are required to make many of the essential consumer products we
depend on. 90 percent of all manufactured goods rely on metal castings.

The Casting Process

In order to understand a foundry, you need to understand the casting process. The general steps
involved in casting are patternmaking, molding, melting, pouring, ejection, cleaning, fettling, and
inspection.

The final casting shape corresponds with the mold it is poured into, so molds are carefully shaped with a
pattern – a wood or metal replica of the object to be cast. The most common mold material is silica
sand, but they can be produced from a number of different materials depending on the casting metal
and method being used.

Charging is one of the most dangerous operations in the foundry. Mistakes can be lethal.

A melting furnace is “charged” with metal and heated above the metal’s melting point. Once the molten
metal has reached a specific pouring temperature it is tapped from the furnace through a spout into a
refractory lined steel pouring ladle. Any slag or impurities are skimmed from the top of the molten metal
surface. The ladle is then tipped to pour molten metal into a mold cavity.
The mold cools and the metal solidifies, then the casting is ejected from the mold and cleaned. The
cleaned casting is finished with fettling, a process which removes excess material from the casting to
meet specified dimensions for the finished product. Depending on the casting specifications, fettling can
be quick and simple, or extremely detailed work. Finished castings are then inspected by the foundry
before being shipped.

Foundries don’t just produce raw castings. They house a number of operations that often include part
design, tool building, prototyping, machining, assembly and other after-sales services.

NEWWWW

A foundry is a factory that produces metal castings. Metals are cast into shapes by melting them into a
liquid, pouring the metal into a mold, and removing the mold material after the metal has solidified as it
cools. The most common metals processed are aluminium and cast iron. However, other metals, such as
bronze, brass, steel, magnesium, and zinc, are also used to produce castings in foundries. In this process,
parts of desired shapes and sizes can be formed.

Process

In metalworking, casting involves pouring liquid metal into a mold, which contains a hollow cavity of the
desired shape, and then allowing it to cool and solidify. The solidified part is also known as a casting,
which is ejected or broken out of the mold to complete the process. Casting is most often used for
making complex shapes that would be difficult or uneconomical to make by other methods.[2]

MELTING

Melting is performed in a furnace. Virgin material, external scrap, internal scrap, and alloying elements
are used to charge the furnace. Virgin material refers to commercially pure forms of the primary metal
used to form a particular alloy. Alloying elements are either pure forms of an alloying element, like
electrolytic nickel, or alloys of limited composition, such as ferroalloys or master alloys. External scrap is
material from other forming processes such as punching, forging, or machining. Internal scrap consists
of gates, risers, defective castings, and other extraneous metal oddments produced within the facility.

The process includes melting the charge, refining the melt, adjusting the melt chemistry and tapping
into a transport vessel. Refining is done to remove harmful gases and elements from the molten metal
to avoid casting defects. Material is added during the melting process to bring the final chemistry within
a specific range specified by industry and/or internal standards. Certain fluxes may be used to separate
the metal from slag and/or dross and degassers are used to remove dissolved gas from metals that
readily dissolve in gasses. During the tap, final chemistry adjustments are made.

FurnaceEdit

Several specialised furnaces are used to heat the metal. Furnaces are refractory-lined vessels that
contain the material to be melted and provide the energy to melt it. Modern furnace types include
electric arc furnaces (EAF), induction furnaces, cupolas, reverberatory, and crucible furnaces. Furnace
choice is dependent on the alloy system quantities produced. For ferrous materials EAFs, cupolas, and
induction furnaces are commonly used. Reverberatory and crucible furnaces are common for producing
aluminium, bronze, and brass castings.

Furnace design is a complex process, and the design can be optimized based on multiple factors.
Furnaces in foundries can be any size, ranging from small ones used to melt precious metals to furnaces
weighing several tons, designed to melt hundreds of pounds of scrap at one time. They are designed
according to the type of metals that are to be melted. Furnaces must also be designed based on the fuel
being used to produce the desired temperature. For low temperature melting point alloys, such as zinc
or tin, melting furnaces may reach around 500 °C (932 °F). Electricity, propane, or natural gas are usually
used to achieve these temperatures. For high melting point alloys such as steel or nickel-based alloys,
the furnace must be designed for temperatures over 1,600 °C (2,910 °F). The fuel used to reach these
high temperatures can be electricity (as employed in electric arc furnaces) or coke. The majority of
foundries specialize in a particular metal and have furnaces dedicated to these metals. For example, an
iron foundry (for cast iron) may use a cupola, induction furnace, or EAF, while a steel foundry will use an
EAF or induction furnace. Bronze or brass foundries use crucible furnaces or induction furnaces. Most
aluminium foundries use either electric resistance or gas heated crucible furnaces or reverberatory
furnaces.

Degassing

Degassing[3] is a process that may be required to reduce the amount of hydrogen present in a batch of
molten metal. Gases can form in metal castings in one of two ways:

by physical entrapment during the casting process or

by chemical reaction in the cast material.

Hydrogen is a common contaminant for most cast metals. It forms as a result of material reactions or
from water vapor or machine lubricants. If the hydrogen concentration in the melt is too high, the
resulting casting will be porous; the hydrogen will exit the molten solution, leaving minuscule air
pockets, as the metal cools and solidifies. Porosity often seriously deteriorates the mechanical
properties of the metal.

An efficient way of removing hydrogen from the melt is to bubble a dry, insoluble gas through the melt
by purging or agitation. When the bubbles go up in the melt, they catch the dissolved hydrogen and
bring it to the surface. Chlorine, nitrogen, helium and argon are often used to degas non-ferrous metals.
Carbon monoxide is typically used for iron and steel.

There are various types of equipment that can measure the presence of hydrogen. Alternatively, the
presence of hydrogen can be measured by determining the density of a metal sample.

In cases where porosity still remains present after the degassing process, porosity sealing can be
accomplished through a process called metal impregnating.

Mold making Edit

In the casting process, a pattern is made in the shape of the desired part. Simple designs can be made in
a single piece or solid pattern. More complex designs are made in two parts, called split patterns. A split
pattern has a top or upper section, called a cope, and a bottom or lower section called a drag. Both solid
and split patterns can have cores inserted to complete the final part shape. Cores are used to create
hollow areas in the mold that would otherwise be impossible to achieve. Where the cope and drag
separates is called the parting line.

When making a pattern it is best to taper the edges so that the pattern can be removed without
breaking the mold. This is called draft. The opposite of draft is an undercut where there is part of the
pattern under the mold material, making it impossible to remove the pattern without damaging the
mold.

The pattern is made of wax, wood, plastic, or metal. The molds are constructed by several different
processes dependent upon the type of foundry, metal to be poured, quantity of parts to be produced,
size of the casting, and complexity of the casting. These mold processes include:
Sand casting — Green or resin bonded sand mold.

Lost-foam casting — Polystyrene pattern with a mixture of ceramic and sand mold.

Investment casting — Wax or similar sacrificial pattern with a ceramic mold.

Ceramic mold casting — Plaster mold.

V-process casting — Vacuum with thermoformed plastic to form sand molds. No moisture, clay or resin
required.

Die casting — Metal mold.

Billet (ingot) casting — Simple mold for producing ingots of metal, normally for use in other foundries.

Loam molding - a built up mold used for casting large objects, such as cannon, steam engine cylinders,
and bells.

Pouring

In a foundry, molten metal is poured into molds. Pouring can be accomplished with gravity, or it may be
assisted with a vacuum or pressurized gas. Many modern foundries use robots or automatic pouring
machines to pour molten metal. Traditionally, molds were poured by hand using ladles.

Shakeout Edit

The solidified metal component is then removed from its mold. Where the mold is sand based, this can
be done by shaking or tumbling. This frees the casting from the sand, which is still attached to the metal
runners and gates — which are the channels through which the molten metal traveled to reach the
component itself.

Degating Edit

Degating is the removal of the heads, runners, gates, and risers from the casting. Runners, gates, and
risers may be removed using cutting torches, bandsaws, or ceramic cutoff blades. For some metal types,
and with some gating system designs, the sprue, runners, and gates can be removed by breaking them
away from the casting with a sledge hammer or specially designed knockout machinery. Risers must
usually be removed using a cutting method (see above) but some newer methods of riser removal use
knockoff machinery with special designs incorporated into the riser neck geometry that allow the riser
to break off at the right place.
The gating system required to produce castings in a mold yields leftover metal — including heads, risers,
and sprue (sometimes collectively called sprue) — that can exceed 50% of the metal required to pour a
full mold. Since this metal must be remelted as salvage, the yield of a particular gating configuration
becomes an important economic consideration when designing various gating schemes, to minimize the
cost of excess sprue, and thus overall melting costs.

Heat treating Edit

Heat treating is a group of industrial and metalworking processes used to alter the physical, and
sometimes chemical, properties of a material. The most common application is metallurgical. Heat
treatments are also used in the manufacture of many other materials, such as glass. Heat treatment
involves the use of heating or chilling, normally to extreme temperatures, to achieve a desired result
such as hardening or softening of a material. Heat treatment techniques include annealing, case
hardening, precipitation strengthening, tempering, and quenching. Although the term "heat treatment"
applies only to processes where the heating and cooling are done for the specific purpose of altering
properties intentionally, heating and cooling often occur incidentally during other manufacturing
processes such as hot forming or welding.

Surface cleaning Edit

After degating and heat treating, sand or other molding media may remain adhered to the casting. To
remove any mold remnants, the surface is cleaned using a blasting process. This means a granular media
will be propelled against the surface of the casting to mechanically knock away the adhering sand. The
media may be blown with compressed air, or may be hurled using a shot wheel. The cleaning media
strikes the casting surface at high velocity to dislodge the mold remnants (for example, sand, slag) from
the casting surface. Numerous materials may be used to clean cast surfaces, including steel, iron, other
metal alloys, aluminium oxides, glass beads, walnut shells, baking powder, and many others. The
blasting media is selected to develop the color and reflectance of the cast surface. Terms used to
describe this process include cleaning, bead blasting, and sand blasting. Shot peening may be used to
further work-harden and finish the surface.

FINISHING

The final step in the process of casting usually involves grinding, sanding, or machining the component in
order to achieve the desired dimensional accuracies, physical shape, and surface finish.
Removing the remaining gate material, called a gate stub, is usually done using a grinder or sander.
These processes are used because their material removal rates are slow enough to control the amount
of material being removed. These steps are done prior to any final machining.

After grinding, any surfaces that require tight dimensional control are machined. Many castings are
machined in CNC milling centers. The reason for this is that these processes have better dimensional
capability and repeatability than many casting processes. However, it is not uncommon today for
castings to be used without machining.

A few foundries provide other services before shipping cast products to their customers. It is common to
paint castings to prevent corrosion and improve visual appeal. Some foundries assemble castings into
complete machines or sub-assemblies. Other foundries weld multiple castings or wrought metals
together to form a finished product.[4]

More and more, finishing processes are being performed by robotic machines, which eliminate the need
for a human to physically grind or break parting lines, gating material, or feeders. Machines can reduce
risk of injury to workers and lower costs for consumables — while also increasing productivity. They also
limit the potential for human error and increase repeatability in the quality of grinding.[5]