Achieving better sand-temperature control with indirect heat transfer
In foundry operations, consistent sand-temperature control during coremaking is essential to maintaining process costs, product bench life and overall quality. Yet that consistency also can be the most difficult to achieve, whether due to seasonal swings in incoming sand temperatures or intermittent production cycles.
Over the past six years, the pursuit of more consistent sand temperature control has been cited as the driving force behind the increased adoption of indirect vertical plate technology by one of the world’s largest independent iron foundries.
The September 2020 issue of Foundry Management & Technology Magazine highlights a recent collaboration between Solex Thermal Science, Waupaca Foundry and MT Systems on an indirect vertical heat transfer solution that has resulted in significantly lower scrap/salvage rates and sand-additive costs.
In this feature, representatives from the three organizations touch on how the three heat exchange units provided by Solex and integrated by MT Systems into a new production line for Waupaca's Plant 3 in Wisconsin has been able to ensure core-sand temperature can be focused within 1°F – even with ambient temperature fluctuations.
This has been a drastic improvement on the incumbent technology where sand temperatures previously varied by as much as 20°F. And it has resulted in several important and significant quality improvements and cost reductions at the plant - notably a 33% reduction in core scrap and rework of cores and a 10% offset in sand additive costs.
Download a pdf to read the full story, and learn more about how it also led to the installation of eight more units at different Waupaca locations.
This entry was last updated on 2021-1-15