Abstract
Artisanal green sand casting of aluminum pots is a notable flourishing business in many urban areas of west and central Africa but seen to be typified by labor-intensive and subjective control of a large number of variables to successfully cast. Correct mold designs with in-flow and cooling rates of molten aluminum are fundamental in reducing labor and defects in the castings. The paper presents sand mold design for casting 30litre-capacity cylindrical aluminum pot of internal diameter 314.7mm, depth 386mm, and wall thickness 4mm with handling lugs alongside its cover using unpressurized gating system ratio of 1:3:3. The design provides suitable specifications of the ladle position, mass and pouring time and in-flow rate of molten aluminum, layout for the mold components, means of compensating process cooling shrinkages of aluminum during solidification, patterns for the castings, and molding box. The motive behind the paper was to emphasize and exemplify the use of basic engineering design procedure for supplementing artisanal green sand molding practices for improving consistency and productivity, and minimizing laboriousness and casing defects with improved profitability in the business.
Highlights
Casting is the process of making desired solid product by pouring molten metal into a refractory mold that is made with a cavity that has the shape and size of the product and allowing the metal to solidify in the cavity to form the product
Both mold halves are contained inside a box called a flask which itself is divided along the parting line
Total volume of material required for the pot without shrinkage allowances(V)
Summary
Casting is the process of making desired solid product by pouring molten metal into a refractory mold that is made with a cavity that has the shape and size of the product and allowing the metal to solidify in the cavity to form the product. Most of the artisans involved in the pot casting are not engineers or holders of degrees or advanced certificates in foundry technology but people who once worked in foundries where they experientially acquired some casting knowledge or technical school leavers and trade centre trainees who acquired the knowledge through years of experience in the pot business itself Such workers are seen to lack in-depth engineering control of the casting variables mold design with correct control of aluminum flow and cooling rates in spite of their highly commendable skills. The workers compete with one another to produce better quality pots and profiteer more so often use contrasting subjective skills in controlling many variables in order to achieve their aims [7, 8] The objective is to exemplify use of the principles by presenting the mold design for casting 30litre-capacity aluminum pot with handling lugs alongside its cover
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