and [Thorsell] took it and made it a casting,” Reade said. Thorsell determined two slab
The cast mount is easier to attach and unattach from the equipment since it requires fewer bolts than the original fabrication design.
cores would be needed to produce the long cylinder due to the location of the parting line. “With three cores, we went
through some effort to make it work like we wanted it to,” Spaeny said. “We still had some doubts.” Great Plains, which produces most of its own metalcasting patterns and coreboxes, checked in with Kansas Castings for input on the castability of the part, since the new features required some additional coring. Hibbs and Ron Pomeroy, Kansas Castings owner, said the final design would not cause any problems at the casting facility. After all the design changes,
Great Plains printed its second pat- tern, this time for test castings to be produced on Kansas Castings’ green sand line. “Great Plains does a great job of sending us drawings for our input so that once the tooling is in our door, we can run the thing straight away,” Hibbs said. “For the coreboxes, we had enough information communi- cated back and forth so that when they were delivered, we did not have to add any venting. They made good cores without a problem.” With the second set of patterns,
Kansas Castings produced 40 total cast ductile iron mounts, enough to showcase the final assembled equip- ment during Great Plains’ dealers’ meetings in July. Before the showcase, the 9.7-lb. castings also passed testing for functionality and durability. “Initial testing looked at whether
[the part] hooked the way we wanted it to and if we had any clearance issues,” Reade said. “Ten we per- formed repetitive impact testing. Te whole testing process took between two and three weeks before we were satisfied with the cast design.” Full production for the castings—
with production aluminum patterns— is expected to begin in the fall.
Future Plans Pleased with the results of the
first sand casting prototype project, 34 | MODERN CASTING August 2012
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