2012 CASTING COMPETITION: BOOMING FRACKING INDUSTRY CALLS FOR CASTING
A weldment to casting conversion by Monarch Industries
won this year’s annual casting competition. Ten others earned Best-In-Class or Honorable Mention status.
M Meeting Demand
T e 610-lb. transmission housing is connected to a 2,300-hp transmission and supports the torque converter components used in hydraulic fracture mining equipment. Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is a method of mining used on wells to extract gas or oil from the rock, stone or shale of a reservoir. It’s often
SHANNON WETZEL, SENIOR EDITOR
att Downing, pattern shop supervisor, Win- nipeg, Canada, wishes every new casting job could follow the guidelines established with a mining equipment transmission component. When Caterpillar Inc. wanted to convert a 36-piece steel weldment to a gray iron casting, it sent senior engineer Darryl Hud- son to visit Monarch in person. After two
days of tours and discussion, both Caterpillar and the casting supplier had a better understanding of each other’s requirements. “It was the perfect scenario to have the design engineer here,” Downing
said. “T ose two days were so valuable after the fact to know where Darryl and [Monarch] wanted to go with the part.” After several rounds of design iterations, Hudson ended up with a single
gray iron casting optimized for manufacturability, along with new casting design knowledge he has been able to apply to other parts. “We tried talking about the part over the phone and with web conferencing, but until I saw it up close, it didn’t sink in,” Hudson said. “For me, actually seeing what they do to pull the pattern away from the mold helped more than under- standing the process in theory.”
used to rejuvenate wells that have stopped producing liquid oil or gas. T e transmission turns a large pump in the fracking equipment to pump a slurry (often a mixture of water and sand) into the ground, which creates cracks in the rock, freeing up the oil. Once the slurry is pumped back up, the oil is able to fl ow out of the well. Originally, Caterpillar sourced the housing for the torque converter (which absorbs the power of the en- gine) from a machine fabricator. But lead times were long, and capacity was limited. According to energy analyst
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ONLINE RESOURCE
Browse through a gallery of 2012’s Casting of the Year candidates at
www.metalcastingdesign.com/ coy2012
May/Jun 2012 | METAL CASTING DESIGN & PURCHASING | 25
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