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Increasing Manufacturing Competency with a ‘Dirt-Cheap’ Sand Casting Lab

Charlene A. Yauch, Ajay J. Athale

Oklahoma State University

Abstract

The Society of Manufacturing Engineers Education Foundation has identified competency gaps in a number of critical areas including manufacturing processes, materials, and teamwork. To address these problem areas and provide students with a hands-on manufacturing experience, an economical sand casting lab was developed and implemented in an industrial processe s course at Oklahoma State University. The lab exercise familiarizes students with the sand casting process using inexpensive and readily available materials and equipment. A key variation is that wax is substituted for metal as the casting medium. This change greatly increases process safety while significantly decreasing the cost. The final product, a votive candle, can be retained by the students as a reminder of their experience. More importantly, while conducting the lab in teams of three, students are confronted with issues related to materials and manufacturability, process improvements, teamwork, and following procedures. Although this lab is currently being utilized with college juniors and seniors, it could also be an appropriate activity for high-school students to learn more about manufacturing processes and related issues. The paper also suggests ways in which the sand casting lab could be expanded to address additional competency gaps such as manufacturing systems principles, ergonomics, and quality.

Introduction

This paper describes a hands-on sand casting lab designed to address several of the competency gaps identified by the Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME) Education Foundation 1. The lab enables students to experience the sand casting process with significantly reduced costs and increased safety compared to a traditional sand casting lab. This has been accomplished by substituting molten wax as the casting medium, replacing commonly used metals such as aluminum or cast iron. Since wax has a very low melting temperature (about 130 degrees F.), it greatly increases process safety, while significantly decreasing cost. Although learning about the sand casting process in a foundry environment using molten metal would be the most preferable way to teach the process, the lab described below provides a reasonable alternative when access to a foundry is not possible.

The lab has been conducted in an introductory industrial processes course within the School of Industrial Engineering and Management (IEM) at Oklahoma State University (OSU). Students in the course are at the junior or senior level. They work in groups of two or three, and the lab takes approximately three to four hours to complete. Proceedings of the 2002 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright © 2002, American Society for Engineering Education

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Athale, A., & Yauch, C. (2002, June), Increasing Manufacturing Competency With A "Dirt Cheap" Sand Casting Lab Paper presented at 2002 Annual Conference, Montreal, Canada. 10.18260/1-2--10129