. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . CAsting innOVAtiOns
Casting Simulation Reduces Costs for Metalcaster, Customer
Shapes & Designs, saving money in pattern debugging and allowing it to put parts into production faster. Epcor produces aluminum green
E
sand castings for the automotive, heavy truck, fueling, bulk handling, pump and air movement industries. Before purchasing the simulation software, the metalcasting facility had to manu- ally make adjustments to its gate and runner systems and validate designs through a series of trials before going into production. Each tooling modifica- tion had a direct impact on program timing and startup costs. “Our goal at Epcor is to get the
design right the first time,” said Mike Maratta, the company’s program and engineering manager. “We looked at several different casting simulation software packages. We liked ESI because it offers an entry level pack- age called QuickCast that is easy to use. We tried it on a few trial parts and found it was able to accurately simulate our molding results.” Epcor applied Quickcast to a 356 aluminum supercharger housing historically produced with an iron chill to accelerate the solidification
pcor Foundries, Cincin- nati, a division of Seilkop Industries Inc., added cast- ing simulation software to its tooling division, HiTech
After the design modifications, two sound castings were achieved.
process and eliminate shrink or po- rosity at the base of the rotor bores. Using a chill adds cost to the casting due to upfront tooling expense, part complexity and labor. Senior design engineer Paul Kiefer
for HiTech Shapes & Designs converted the CAD model of the housing to an STL file to use in the Quikcast software package. The mold components were assembled using the software’s user interface. The software automatically produced a block-structured mesh, and
process parameters were defined along with material properties and conditions. The software then produced results that enabled Epcor to visualize the mold filling, solidification process and resulting part. “With the original mold design, we
saw shrinkage in the heavier areas of the part and in isolated bolt bosses,” Maratta said. “We tried a few changes, including changing the gate position and adding risers to feed additional metal into the casting as it cooled.”
An isometric view of the supercharger housing is shown. July/August 2011
A QuickCast image shows shrink removed from a casting and moved inside the riser. A no-shrink area also is shown.
MetAl CAsting Design & PurChAsing 49
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