CPT International 02/2021

now. While it was initially ademand
from carmakers, intended to ensure
reproducible production steps and
high quality, for many casters traceability
(e.g. via RFID chips) now includes
the almost complete penetration of
individual process steps, and thus also
the reduced potential for faults. “The
casting knows best what has happened
to it –wejust have to make it talk,”
sums up Prof. Hartmann. While it is
relatively easy to mark acasting during
the die-casting process, it is definitely
more difficult in the case of core shooting
and sand casting. Hartmann is
working with Franken Guss Kitzingen
on the Castcode project, involving the
marking of components via the mold,
whereby amark isembedded in the
pattern plate. This would enable the
calling up of current data on the melt,
Christof Amend, Melting Operations
Manager at Düker in
Laufach, demonstrates charging
via joystick. The chutes
for input materials can be
seen on the left.
Fully automatic core production
at Inacore inErgoldsbach:
industrial robots carry
out most of the work steps
here. They place the cores in
racks marked with RFID
codes.
Photo: Inacore
mold material data including machine
data (mold plant, core-shooting
machine) and, for example, cooling
data. The hand molding shop Karl Kasper
Guss introduced RFID chips for
administrating mold boxes some time
ago. In the Inacore core shop in Ergoldsbach
in Bavaria, which supplies the
BMW light-metal foundry in Landshut
with inorganic cores, the RFID chips are
attached tothe racks. This enables them
to assign production parameters to
batches. The production cycles and their
associated data can be called up in realtime
via aPC, and can be compared
with older data. Inacore cooperates
with the University of Passau so that
one day –with the help of this wealth
of data –nomore faults will be possible.
Data quality counts
It cannot, however, beassumed that a
wealth of production data automatically
provides good forecasts on quality.
“I could have amountain of data with
little information, or just 120 lines of
data with really important information,”
Gottschling knows, and Hartmann
adds: “Getting agood data structure
in the company isthe very first
thing that must be done before optimizations
are possible.”
The two professors recently proved
this with aparticularly creative project
on data gathering: the state of sand is
acoustically determined using their
so-called ‘chafing generator’ and the
forecasting data is used to calculate an
optimum time window for sand regeneration.
The consequence: aprocess with
improved energy and resource conservation.
Safeguarding the future
by reducing rejects
Afoundry can save alot of money by
reducing the number of rejects. The
Danish Norican Group working with the
South African IT company DataProphet
offers the latest system for foundries,
intended to reduce the number of
rejects in serial production by up to 45
percent. Such systems are already in operation
in aSpanish foundry group and at
the South African Atlantis foundry.
The system from Swedish company
pour-tech, recently presented in CP+T
1/2021 from page 24, also promises to
reduce the number of rejects. Foundries
where defective casting is particularly
expensive, e.g. roller foundries, have
already used IT systems for the early
prevention of defects for some time
now. At Walze Irle in Netphen, for
example, probes provide data that computer
algorithms use to determine melting
point and melting range values, as
well as tapping and casting temperatures,
to prepare for casting.
The race for the future of the sector
in the digital age –with minimal rejects
and maximum process reliability –has
therefore started. “If weknow all the
data, all the starting conditions and the
laws of nature we can provide atotally
accurate forecast,” Prof. Gottschling
replies to the question of how exact the
forecasting function could be. This may
well prove difficult. But Prof. Hartmann
is certain that foundries could become
“more flexible, more agile, more reliable
and more robust,” –anadvantage
as afoundry location, that should definitely
be exploited.
CASTING PLANT &TECHNOLOGY 2/2021 35