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Additive manufacturing is now being used to generate sand molds and cores with complex and customized geometries with binder jetting, which is one of the seven subprocesses within the additive [...]

Research into the breakdown of silica sand through mechanical attrition has led University of Northern Iowa researchers to information that could reduce the generation of respirable silica dust in the [...]

A metalcasting facility manufacturing a complex, rangy aluminum casting experienced a casting quality issue after changing its phenolic urethane binder formula for its molds and cores. Microshrinkage arose in an [...]

Additive Manufacturing is enabling the casting of complex geometries directly from digital design data, including 3D-scanned and reverse-engineered structures and even functionally graded lattices. By ink jetting binder into a bed of sand layer-by-layer, dimensionally precise sand molds and cores can be printed to serve as soft tooling for sand casting. However, the related increase in geometry complexity can lead to challenges in ensuring casting quality and yield. One recently explored remedy is to introduce sensors (the Internet of Things) to enable the collection of a diversity of data at difficult-to-access locations in molds in order to measure temperature, pressure, moisture, and core shift. This effort has explored measuring barometric pressure at strategic locations to evaluate the ventilation design of internal cores. Optimized and measurable ventilation can be leveraged to improve the quality of castings by reducing porosity and improving surface finish. By measuring the pressures that accumulate within cores due to binder decomposition, new ventilation designs and strategies—enabled with complex, 3D printed fluidic channels—can be explored. In this work, two castings with different metal temperatures were poured and internal pressures were measured and compared to simulations demonstrating that wireless disposable sensors can be used to measure pressure and that the measured pressure correlated with venting strategies now possible with 3D printed sand cores.

Water-soluble salts or electrolytes are just some of the mineral contaminants found in everyday tap water used by foundries across the U.S for their green sand systems. Bentonite is the [...]

As liquid metal solidifies, it contracts first in volume and then physical size. Accurately predicting the final dimensions has been accomplished with a set of simple rules along with significant [...]

The growth of 3-D printing capabilities has become a hot topic in manufacturing. For metalcasters in particular, what was a way of producing prototypes and niche tooling has grown into [...]

Titanium alloys continue to remain some of the most versatile alloys available with high strength to weight ratios and excellent resistance to corrosion. Titanium's use as an engineering material in [...]

The article discusses the research on 3D-printed molds for sand casting and the need to monitor the curing time of these molds. It explores the use of embedded environmental sensors in sand blocks to capture humidity, temperature, and other factors affecting the curing process, with the goal of establishing guidelines for mold usage based on specific environmental conditions.

The article discusses the study on the impact of adding specialty aggregates such as zircon and chromite to silica sand on the reduction of veining and fin defects in cores and molds. Specialty aggregates were found to have lower thermal expansion compared to silica sand which helps in preventing the formation of cracks and veining defects on the surface of cores.

The article focuses on the impact of contaminants found in tap and well water in the U.S. on the properties of green sand. Topics discussed include the effect of electrolytic salts on the physical characteristics of green sand, effect of electrolytic salts on the wet tensile strength of green sand, and the presence of contaminants in green sand including sodium and calcium.