Foundry and Heat

Treatment Process

Foundry
- a factory that produces metal castings.

Foundry Process

Melting
Degassing
Mold making
Pouring
Shakeout
Degating
Heat treating
Surface cleaning
Finishing

Melting
Performed in a furnace.
includes melting the charge, refining the melt,
adjusting the melt chemistry and tapping into a
transport vessel. Refining is done to remove
deleterious gases and elements from the molten
metal to avoid casting defects.
Furnace - refractory lined vessels that
contain the material to be melted and
provide the energy to melt it.

Degassing
to reduce the amount of hydrogen dissolved in
the liquid metal.

Mold making
In casting process a pattern is made in the shape
of the desired part.
Made out of wax, wood, plastic or metal.

Mold making
Sand casting Green or resin bonded sand mold.
Lost-foam casting Polystyrene pattern with a
mixture of ceramic and sand mold.
Investment casting Wax or similar sacrificial
pattern with a ceramic mold.
Ceramic mold casting Plaster mold.
V-process casting Vacuum is used in conjunction
with thermoformed plastic to form sand molds.
Die casting Metal mold.
Billet (ingot) casting Simple mold for producing
ingots of metal normally for use in other foundries.

Pouring
- Pouring can be accomplished with gravity, or
it may be assisted with a vacuum or pressurized
gas.

Shakeout
- this can be done by shaking or tumbling
where the mold is sand based.

Degating
Is the removal of the heads, runners, gates,
and risers from the casting.

Heat treating
- is a group of industrial and metalworking
processes used to alter the physical, and
sometimes chemical, properties of a material.

most common application is metallurgical.

Surface cleaning
Blasting process
- a granular media will be propelled against the
surface of the casting to mechanically knock away
the adhering sand.

Finishing
- involves grinding, sanding, or machining the
component in order to achieve the desired
dimensional accuracies, physical shape and
surface finish.

Heat Treatment
- a process of heating and cooling metals to
achieve desired physical and mechanical
properties through modification of their
crystalline structure.

Heat Treatment Processes

Hardening
Annealing
Normalizing
Tempering
Surface Hardening

Hardening
Impart strength and hardness
Steel is heated and held there
until its carbon is dissolved.
Quenching is performed
To cool hot metal rapidly by immersing it in brine
(salt water), water, oil, molten salt, air or gas.
Sets up residual stresses in the work piece and
sometimes results in cracks. It was removed by
another process called annealing.

Annealing

reduce hardness,
remove residual stresses,
improve toughness,
restore ductility, and
to alter various mechanical, electrical or
magnetic properties of material through
refinement of grains.

Normalizing
similar to annealing and is carried out to
avoid excessive softness in the material.
heated above austenitic phase (1100 C)
and then cooled in air.
less expensive than annealing.

Tempering

Hardened steel
Reduce brittleness,
Increase ductility, and toughness
Relieve stresses in martensite structure
Heated to lower critical temperature (350-400
C) for one hour and then cooled slowly at
prescribed rate.

Surface Hardening
The process of hardening the surface of a metal
object while allowing the metal deeper
underneath to remain soft.
Process:

Flame and induction hardening

Carburizing
Nitriding
Cyaniding
Carbonitriding
Ferritic nitrocarburizing

Flame and
induction
Hardening
processes in which the surface of the steel is
heated to high temperatures then cooled rapidly,
generally using water.

Carburizing
produces a higher carbon steel composition on
the part surface.

Nitriding
heats the steel part to 482621 C (900
1,150 F) in an atmosphere of ammonia gas and
dissociated ammonia.
The hardness is achieved by the formation of
nitrides

Cyaniding
Fast and efficient; it is mainly used on low
carbon steels.

Heated to 871-954 C (1600-1750 F) in a bath

of sodium cyanide.
This process produces a thin, hard shell
(between 0.25 - 0.75 mm, 0.01 and 0.03 inches).

Carbonitriding
Similar to cyaniding except a gaseous
atmosphere of ammonia and hydrocarbons is
used instead of sodium cyanide.
It is heated to 775885 C (quenched)

649788 C (not quenched)

Ferritic nitrocarburizing
diffuses mostly nitrogen and some carbon into
the case of a workpiece below the critical
temperature, approximately 650 C .