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Session 3247

AN APPARATUS FOR INVESTIGATING THERMAL DISTORTION IN BONDED SANDS

Sam N. Ramrattan, Jorge Rodriguez, Mitchel Keil and Alamgir Choudhury

Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering Western Michigan University Parkview Campus Kalamazoo, MI 49008-5336

The promises of many new alternatives for sand as a medium for the production of cast metal parts have garnered attention of research and press. Yet, close to 90% of annual cast metal production is still done with sand. Its versatility and ease of use foster rapid innovation in an industry where the ability to change quickly can mean survival. This is especially true for chemically bonded sand. Sand has many pluses, but it is far from perfect. Most of the problems with sand castings are due to variations. These variations are mainly in the characteristics of the medium and the materials being utilized, as well as in the process itself. But even with those variations, the popularity of sand-binder systems keeps increasing, and the search for near-net shaped castings keeps going.

In order to accomplish near-net shapes it is necessary to control the thermal distortion suffered by molds and cores, an issue that has not been studied that much in the field. The utilization of the developed device for investigating thermal distortion in chemically bonded sands is presented. The device is capable of placing variable loads on sand-binder samples at metal pouring temperatures. The testing is done without combustible gases. The device, developed at Western Michigan University, has undergone several design modifications that improve ease of use and safety. The basic operation of the device is discussed, and sample distortion curves from performed tests are presented and discussed. The results obtained so far indicate that this apparatus is a useful tool to generate comparative curves that can be utilized during initial selection of sand-binder materials.

Introduction

The use of chemical binders in hot or cold core-box or on patterns for molds, all have one main common goal: near-net shape castings. The goal is to produce cores and molds of consistent dimensional accuracy, and hence a casting satisfying the increasingly tighter tolerances of the customer. This is true in the automotive industry where complex thin wall casting must mate in close tolerance with various other manufactured components and sub-assemblies. Today, both hot and cold processes achieve this goal successfully for core and mold production when

Proceedings of the 2004 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright © 2004, American Society for Engineering Education

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Keil, M., & Ramrattan, S., & Rodriguez, J., & Choudhury, A. (2004, June), An Apparatus For Investigating Thermal Distortion In Bonded Sands Paper presented at 2004 Annual Conference, Salt Lake City, Utah. 10.18260/1-2--13490