Recent Developments in the Ironfounding Industry

Abstract

Iron castings are in extensive use throughout engineering construction and are available in a wide range of properties, casting size and complexity. Ironfounding is in part associated with a particular industry—the ironfounding industry—and is in part a production engineering technique adopted by firms, their designers and engineers, on the basis of its process and product merits compared with those of other techniques. The changing pattern of manufacture and competition from other techniques is having important influences on the structure and capacity of industry producing iron castings. Additionally, the repeated cycles of business recession may result in the disappearance of the facilities for the production of certain types of foundry product. Although most recent developments in ironfounding are a continuation of trends which could be discerned or forecast a long time ago, the cumulative effect of these changes has been to revolutionize completely some aspects of the process of iron casting. The range of cast irons has been somewhat increased in recent years by addition to the variety of spheroidal graphite (s.g.) irons, malleable irons and alloy cast irons available. Most of the recent developments in ironfounding have, however, been concerned with improving production efficiency and the introduction of new melting, moulding and coremaking processes, enabling the ironfounder to provide the engineer and designer with a better service—maintaining prices at low level, improving dimensional accuracy and casting soundness with reduced delivery times. This has been achieved by the increased use of scrap made possible by developments in melting furnaces and molten metal treatment, by the introduction of new and improved moulding machinery and by the adoption of new methods of bonding sand used for moulds and cores, replacing many traditional techniques. These changes have had their influence equally in the large, highly mechanized mass-production foundries and in the jobbing foundries catering for short run work. An ironfoundry is an extremely exacting environment for mechanical equipment and for all control engineering. For this reason automatic moulding and other foundry plant need special design and robust construction. Most mechanized foundry plant of an automatic character represents a high capital investment which must run for long periods without breakdown, requiring long orders and work of a repetitive character.