Michael Economides of the energy industry publication Energy Tribune, the estimated size of the global hy- draulic fracturing industry grew from $2.8 billion in 1999 to $20 billion in 2011. Further growth is limited by how quickly fracking equipment can be built. While Caterpillar declined to comment on the specifi c volumes it produces for the market, demand for its fracking equipment has grown. “Once volumes started to increase, it was determined to be cost eff ective to switch it to casting,” Hudson said. “T e fabrication is labor-intensive, and more than 30 parts had to be welded together. T e conversion was a defi nite cost savings.” Converting to a casting opened up
capacity by cutting lead times from three months to a month or less, Hudson said. With the weldment design, the fabrica- tor needed to order, cut , bend, weld and machine the steel before delivery.
“Supplier capacity problems raised red
fl ags [with the weldment],” Hudson said. “In the casting process, once you’ve got the tooling made, you just make your molds, pour it and send it off to machining.” T e casting also improved the
component’s scrap rate. “Going to casting is a defi nite im-
provement in quality because it lim- ited the leak points that corresponded with the welding paths of the original fabrication,” Hudson said.
Designing for Casting Beyond visiting Caterpillar’s own
metalcasting facility in Peoria, Ill., Hudson’s trip to Monarch’s sand cast- ing facility was his fi rst in conjunction with a specifi c casting job. “We took him to the foundry to
give him an understanding of where we needed to go [with the design],” Downing said. “Once we came back from the foundry, we were able to
work from that knowledge.” Hudson’s visit lasted two days,
during which he and Downing went over the part’s weldment design, shape and function to adjust it for the casting process and meet tooling re- quirements. T e team worked around draft angles and set up cores to create internal and external features. “A lot of the issues we addressed
were things like ribs and bosses that might have been helpful from a weld- ment perspective but weren’t required or made it challenging to cast,” Down- ing said. “We looked at what we could remove from the weldment and where we might need to position necessary structural ribs and fi llets.” One of the design changes made
during the visit consisted of separat- ing one supporting rib in the middle of the part’s interior into two ribs. T e change allowed Monarch to eliminate a loose core piece from one
Horizontal hydraulic fracture mining enables the rejuvenation of naturgal gas or oil deposits deep underneath the Earth’s surface.
26 | METAL CASTING DESIGN & PURCHASING | May/Jun 2012
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