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“We were able to cast lead around a pipe for the customer,” he said. Nuclead, West Bridgewater, Mass., a


lead products producer that maintains casting capabilities, indicates it pro- duces lead bullets and fishing sinkers in the casting process, as well as large products like ship ballast keels (coun- terweights used on seagoing vessels). The company also makes lead casks for nuclear storage and transportation.


Where You’ll Find It The International Lead Association,


London, indicates that around 8 million metric tons of lead were used in 2010, up from about 6.5 million metric tons in 2000. However, 80% of this lead usage


Table 1. Lead Properties Symbol


Atomic Number Atomic Mass Melting Point Boiling Point


Crystal Structure Density Color


According to the American Foundry


Pb 82


207.2 amu


327.5C (621.5F) 1,740C (3,164.0F) Cubic


11.36 g/cu. cm Bluish


Information courtesy of the International Lead Association, London.


goes into the production of batteries. The metalcasting segment is a small percentage of the remaining 20%.


Society, Schaumburg, Ill., lead and zinc casting sales amounted to $644,143,000 in 2010. (The society does not maintain sales figures for lead alone.) Sales of cast lead and zinc-based alloys are projected to grow at a rate of 8.1% through 2013 and 6.7% through 2019. The two materials’ combined long term growth rate is expected to outpace gray iron, copper and steel, with their greatest potential for gains in electrical equipment and noncurrent-carrying wiring devices. Lead products generally are pro-


duced in a permanent mold process, such as diecasting or gravity pouring, but they also can be sand cast. Lead


Investigating the Universe’s Origin Physicists at CERN, the European Organization for


Nuclear Research, are conducting experiments to reproduce the moment after the Big Bang, and lead castings are help- ing make it happen. A large, single-arm, electromagnetic calorimeter for the ALICE detector (a large ion collider) has been built to collide two beams of lead ions and generate


a quark-gluon plasma—the state of matter hypoth- esized to exist at the beginning of the universe. More than 20,000 5 x 5-in. lead tiles cast by Vulcan GMS, Milwaukee, encircle the beam pipe, with fiber optic wires running through holes in the tiles. The wires will capture data at a rate of 1 gigabyte per second. METAL


36


Metal Casting Design anD PurChasing


July/august 2011


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