Feature Article
Nondestructive Testing and Inspection by Shellcast, Inc.
has been in-house NDT capabilities. The company has x-ray, fluorescent penetrant, and magnetic particle inspection equipment and is staffed by individuals with well over 80 years of combined experience with investment castings. The company is the only small foundry operation in the State of Michigan with an in-house lab. With customer quality demands growing by the day, it became clear that Nadcap accreditation was an essential next step and in 2014 the drive to achieve it began, and the goal was reached in September of 2016. Today the NDT lab plays a huge part in daily activities and has become an essential tool for both production and development activities. New product activities are bolstered
S
by the ability to get rapid feedback on gating and overall process success. A recent case in point was a small part a family used in a missile launcher for an
20 ❘ July 2020 ®
hellcast, Inc. is now approaching its 60th anniversary and one of the keys to the company success
aircraft application. The customer had been struggling with poor NDT yields from the previous supplier that caused chronic schedule interruptions. Shellcast developed a CAD file that incorporated the planned gating approach and 3-D printed a set of patterns for initial casting trials. With the advantage of in-house FPI and X-ray, results were available less than an hour after parts were cast and the company was able to move forward with a multi-cavity tool with all gating being injected with assurance of x-ray yields in the 100% bracket. Advantages are not always obvious to most, like being able to x-ray shells to assure complete passage formation on complex parts. X-raying the gating and runners to determine efficiencies and potential mass reductions for cost savings along with a host of other applications. Dan LeMire, Shellcast’s Level III stated: “We look at everything from a high- density standpoint. We use FPI to look at parts before they go to HIP to assure that argon does not have a path to the
inside of the part and prevent closure of voids. There have been occasions where x-raying the gating before cutoff
has
identified trouble areas that we wouldn’t have spotted without our lab.” Bob Johnson, “Customers aren’t designing easier parts today and as we look at the AS-9100D mandate for risk- based thinking using NDT as a tool to evaluate and improve the process, we feel that we are covering the bases pretty well”.
“Overall the value of the NDT
process is significant and it should not be feared. It drives the entire organization to think in different terms and it pushes the folks to view even the commercial grade components as requiring high subsurface density. We can’t however overlook the value of FPI and MPI to give us that full spectrum view of product quality so in all we feel that we are well equipped to accept the most challenging components.”
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32
