MONDAY, continued 11:30 p.m. - 12:00 p.m.


Additive Manufacturing/3D Printing Discussion Panel John Marcin, Pratt & Whitney, ICI Director


12:00 p.m. - 1:00 p.m. LUNCH 1:00 p.m. - 1:30 p.m.


Industry 4.0 for Investment Casting Michael Kügelgen, MK Technology GmbH


The forth industrial revolution with autonomous and smart machines will change the working world fundamentally. In modern production and industrial plants nothing will remain the same and there will be drastic changes – this is at least what the intercedes of this trend are claiming. What does this mean for our Investment Casting world in general and in particular? First of all we have to accept, that I.C. around the world is not the same. There is still a lot of manual technology in use. But on the other end there are fully automatic lines with several 6-axis Robots, automatic refill, shuttles and continuous monitoring and controlling. The second group is of course the more important one, when we start our discussion about Industry 4.0. And we have to split into two major fields: one is the production site and the output of I.C. parts. The idea of Industry 4.0 can help to improve the quality, to shorten the development and delivery times and to reduce the scrap rate. And the second interesting field for the new approach are all production machines and equipment, the robots, shuttles, the transfer stations and all moving and turning parts. Industry 4.0 can help to optimize the maintenance and to reduce costs, downtime and store capacity. In a way, both areas belong together but we all have to find individual solutions when implementing the idea of Industry 4.0. And beside all the positive aspects we have to understand, that the new trend will also affect our working world and if we really think it to the very end, there might be a complete man less production and everything will be done by Robots. In this paper we will explain what might be possible and which solutions are already implemented.


1:30 p.m. - 2:00 p.m. Prototyping Opportunities for Investment Castings, From an Ounce to 9,000 lb. Will Jeffs, James Collins, Castings Technology International The manufacture of prototype castings is a vital step in the route to market for investment foundries and Cti will present its own in-house experience in this area based on their practical experience over the last twenty five years. These castings are not merely “look alikes”, but fully functional certifiable castings manufactured to the same acceptance criteria as if they were tooled components. Whilst it is common practice to assemble ALM patterns in multiple segments, further processing of these sacrificial patterns is fraught with difficulty in the 2,000 lb plus size range. A variety of options have been trialled at Cti and this practical experience has led to a natural selection of the most user friendly technology utilizing a range of novel molding techniques. The paper will outline the advantages of each prototyping option with respect to alloy.


2:00 p.m. - 6:00 p.m. EXPO October 2017 ❘ 27 ®


TUESDAY, OCTOBER 17, 2017


8:00 a.m. - 8:10 a.m. OPENING REMARKS 8:10 a.m. - 8:55 a.m.


Permeability Panel Discussion Julie Markee, Key Process Innovations, ICI Director, Nipendra “Nip” Singh, S&A Consulting, ICI Director Craig Lanham, Taylor Thornhill, O'Fallon Casting The effect of permeability is an often ignored as it is often times one of the least understood shell properties. Most foundries know they need permeability but they might not know what factors are impacting permeability and what to do if casting quality points towards issues around permeability. As a result of this panel discussion, foundries will gain a greater understanding of permeability and specific areas within the process which can impact permeability. The purpose of this panel is to discuss: • What is permeability • Why permeability is important • How to measure permeability • What parameters need to be adjusted or controlled in order to impact permeability


8:55 a.m. - 9:25 a.m. Comprehensive Study of Thermo-Physical Properties of Investment Shells


Mingzhi Xu, Missouri University of Science and Technology Investment shell thermos-physical properties are important to control the process and metal solidification. Those properties are particularly significant when simulation software is used to predict the process. A combination of laser flash technique and inverse method were developed by the author to accurately determine the thermal properties of shells under equilibrium as well as during real- time metal pouring and solidification. Those properties have been widely used in the current investment shops. Additionally, Investment shell molds are typically built up with metastable amorphous silica binder and may include fused (amorphous) silica flour as filler and crushed fused silica grains as stucco. These metastable amorphous (non-crystalline) materials can crystallize (devitrify) at elevated temperature during industrial process and the amount of transformed amorphous phase depends on temperature, time at temperature, and the presence of mineralizers. Further study showed that the degree to which these amorphous phase materials devitrify during the process will affect the thermo-mechanical properties, which controls the solidification and ceramic shell integrity. In this article, influences of firing temperature on the thermo-mechanical properties of silica-based shell molds were investigated. The thermal properties were also correlated to the degree of phase transformations, which can occur during sequential heating/cooling cycles in investment casting processing.


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