Have you ever thought about how foundry works? If you haven’t heard much about it, then you should know that it is a factory where metal castings are produced. Metals are melted and then poured into a mold after which it solidifies. In foundries, iron, aluminum, steel, magnesium are used for castings. The sizes and shapes of the mold are decided by the production unit only. Here is the detailed procedure of foundries:
Melting And Furnace
At first, different metals have to be melted at a certain temperature and pressure. To know how to do foundries work, you need to understand the entire functioning of them. The furnace is charged by using virgin material (the material used to form alloy). The melting is done and then refined to remove all the casting defects and harmful elements. Different kinds of furnaces are used to heat metal and there are special vessels that provide energy to melt metals. The furnace design is quite complicated and these range in different sizes. Degassing is done to reduce the hydrogen amount of the molten metal. Due to chemical reactions, excess hydrogen is formed on castings which need to be removed soon.
Mold Making
During casting, mold is made in a certain kind of pattern. Different kinds of designs can be prepared by using molds. The pattern of molds can be made with metal, plastic, wax, and wood. Now the molds are made as per the foundry requirements. What kind of metal will be poured in it? The size and complexity of casting also matter when it comes to design a mold.
Pour, Shake And Remove
After the mold has been prepared, the molten metal is transferred into it. Pouring is done with the help of gravity or pressure. Most of the modern foundries used automatic machines or robots to get this work done. The solid metal is shaken up so that it can be removed from the mold. The casting is freed from the sand but it stays attached to the metal. By degating process, runners, gates, and heads are removed from casting. Different tools are used to get this work done.
Treatment Of Heat and Cleaning
Heat treatments play a major role in foundries because it helps the metal to get the desired shape and size. Case hardening, annealing, tempering, and many more are heat treatments through which metal has to go. When the heat treatment is done, molten media and sand are removed by surface cleaning. The blasting procedure is used to do surface cleaning of castings. The final procedure is to give finishing to the component to get the desired results. Without finishing, the product won’t look perfect. The strong machines are used to improve the shape and smoothness of the product.
Now you must have understood how do foundries work. Whenever you will see a metal casting, you will understand the process it has gone through. Even the simplest metal item isn’t made within seconds but it takes time and lots of procedures before the final product is presented to the customer.