Sustainable machinability of cast iron material by optimizing Mn and S configurations

Abstract

In manufacturing industry, sustainability plays an important role for increasing the operational functionality of various machined components. Endeavours are made across the world, throughout this century, to bring down tool consumption by optimizing chemical composition on cast iron components. Within the cast iron material, sulphur is considered as an impurity; however it possesses potential to solve this issue when increased with respect to Manganese, in a specific proportion. In casting industry, generally, sulphur is kept at a level of 0.05–0.08% throughout. Series of experiments being conducted to observe the behaviour of sulphur in casting as well as to understand the cumulative effect of P & Mn on mechanical properties followed by its microstructure, globally. The objective of this research was to establish tool life improvement by addition of sulphur in a cost effective unique method by using experimentation in two phases. The phase-1 dealt with the addition of sulphur in molten metal pool inside furnace, at selected foundry plant. The pure sulphur (yellowish coloured, normally known as Gandhak), infused into molten metal using sandwich process followed by casting of chosen product. The phase-2 dealt with the machining of bare & modified samples followed by establishing the results between inserts used for machining. Machining carried out on vertical machining centre using ceramic inserts. The combined results are analysed by wear pattern analysis which finally concluded that 45% less life consumed in machining of modified casting as compare to the bare casting.