Dalton Foundry
Uses Technology to Benefit Customer
The gray iron casting facility utilized new technology for stress analysis and mold-making to solve a customer’s quality and lead-time issues. SHANNON WETZEL, MANAGING EDITOR
A
ll 10 castings in the ini- tial trial run showed the crack. It was at the cor- ner of a rib, sometimes in
several points. Filling and solidifica- tion modeling had indicated no issues. Dalton Foundry, Warsaw, Ind., had a case to solve for its customer, and time was running short. The part was a 442-lb. gray iron
gear case cover housing used in industrial air compressors located in
free-standing boxes at worksites to generate industrial air and power. It was a prototype casting to go into production in late 2016, and further development of the air compressor assembly hinged on its successful and timely manufacture. Dalton Foundry, which is a divi-
sion of Neenah Enterprises Inc., had built production intent metal prototype tooling for the part after casting process modeling showed
no filling or solidification problems with the design. Unfortunately, the crack appeared from the first proto- type poured. “We went through several gating
design changes and process changes to see if there was a way to eliminate the crack,” said Rob Burita, tooling engineer at Dalton Foundry. “Every time we ran one of the changes, we still had the crack. We started realizing it was something inherently built into the design of the part.” Due to the nature of the crack and its location at the corner of the rib, Burita suspected it could be caused by stress during solidification. Dalton Foundry attempted to alter the design of the casting on its own by manually filing the core to alter its shape, but the crack persisted. Te metalcaster now had the unpalatable task of telling the customer their design was the culprit. “We knew there would be a pretty
Casting this gearcase housing for a large commercial compressor assembly did not prove to be easy. An early design resulted in cracks in each of the first 10 castings produced during the trial run.
40 | MODERN CASTING September 2015
significant design change,” Burita said. Recently, Burita had been exposed to the MAGMAstress extension module for use in casting process modeling, and he knew it would help identify what was causing the stress and how to resolve it. Although it ran MAGMA solidification software, Dalton Foundry did not own that particular stress module. “After we exhausted all the process,
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