Molding Operations at Spokane Steel Foundry

by Randy Mullins, Molding Supervisor

Spokane Industries Steel Castings Division boasts two varieties of molding lines in which to generate steel castings and meet our customers demand - Greensand and No-Bake lines. Our No-Bake line is an automated IMF conveyor system. It provides the ability to make larger steel castings and more steel castings per mold. We have the capability of running four to eight patterns at the mixer head with two to four patterns on our backup line depending on the size of the pattern.

As the loop begins each pattern is filled at the mixer station, compacted and sent to get strike off where an automated arm removes the excessive sand from the pattern. The mold is then sent to the roll over machine where the mold is prepped and stripped from the pattern. The empty pattern is looped back around to the mixer head to be set up and filled again.

The mold is then transported to a curing oven where it finishes curing. It then is prepped and cleaned out and sent to the flow coating station where we permeate the mold with a water base coating to give it a good penetration of coating to protect the metal from burn in and to give the casting a smooth finish. Its then sent through a drying oven to cure. This creates a strong barrier between the coating and the molded sand.

The mold proceeds down the conveyor line and reaches the coring line where the cores are fitted in place and prepped for closing. Once the mold is cleaned out and cored up it is sent to the closer which is an automated manipulator that picks up the drag half of the mold and places it on a plate then returns and picks up the cope half, rotates and places it on the drag half, then sent out to be placed on the pouring floor.

The Steel Foundry pouring floor has forty-eight plates that are divided into four rows of twelve plates which can have from forty-eight to ninety-six steel casting molds depending on the size of the molds. Once the molds are poured off, they are transferred to be cooled. When the steel casting reaches its cooling time it is sent to a shaker where the steel casting is separated from the mold and the sand is reclaimed back into the sand system to be reused at the mixing station.

Our Greensand line is where we make our smaller steel castings. We have two lines of greensand molding, an EMI line that makes 30x36 molds and a larger EMI 36x64 molding line. These molding lines are made with a clay bonding system. The clay bonding sand is mixed and monitered with a Hartley automated system that controls the mixture of reclaimed sand, Gilsonite, Bentonite, water and cereal flour which comprises our facing and backing sand. It is then transported to a holding bin for each cope and drag side of the molding lines.

Once a pattern is mounted to a mounting plate on each side of the machines, a flask is placed over the pattern where sand is released and fills the flask. The sand is then tamped and compacted down to form a mold. The mold is stripped from the pattern and sent to the closing station where the molds are cleaned out and cores are placed. When the mold is ready to be closed the cope is brought over and placed over the drag, clamped up and sent to the pouring floor.

Spokane Industries Steel Castings Division can place up to seventy steel casting molds out on the floor to be poured off. When the steel casting has cooled, the mold is sent to our punch out machine where the steel castings are separated and sand returned to be reclaimed in the sand recycling system.

Billy Newman, Production Manager at Spokane Steel Castings states "Our processes and procedures have vastly improved over the last few years as we strive to augment our recycling programs, reduce waste, and reclaim as much of the process as possible which minimizes our carbon footprint. Our goal is to lead by example in the Steel Casting Industry and maximize our efficiencies."

Reconfiguring Finishing Cells

Finishing Cells

In everything we do, we try to increase efficiencies, improve processes, and reduce waste.  There are 7 forms of waste; the 2 main forms of waste that most significantly affect our finishing department are over processing and wasted motion. In theory, just by moving operations into a certain area, you’re not really eliminating a lot of waste.  Effective cells are designed to eliminate those wastes.  We want to take “families” of parts and run them through a condensed work area designed for those castings. 

The introduction of finishing cells will also assist as we train new employees.  When we bring people onto the work force, they are somewhat isolated.  Being new, they wade into the unknown.  With finishing cells, you have teams.  The newcomer not only gets training but they become part of something.  They’re part of a team - part of something bigger than themselves.  They experience camaraderie that allows an outsider to become an insider very quickly. 

As a job shop, we have a wide variety of products that we process through the finishing department that would need to be identified and classified.  If we can identify similarities – alloy, size range, processing steps, etc.  We can process those in the same area and have the same people working on them that know exactly what work content is needed – no more and no less – to get that product out the door.  This would greatly enhance workflow and minimize waste.

At this time, the reconfiguration of the finishing cells is underway and the first iteration should be complete by mid-august. 

Spokane Industries Updates Dust Collection Facilities

Spokane Industries is proud to announce a substantial update to it’s Dust Collection facilities for it’s Precision Investment Castings Division.  Installed by Filter Technologies, this improves capacity to a total of 38,000 cfm, an increase of 28,000 cfm over the previous system.  This new state-of-the-art system exemplifies Spokane Industries’ “Attitude of Excellence.” 

SPOKANE, WA – MAY 2013: 

As an industry leader committed to minimizing environmental impact,  maximizing conservation, and improving safety, Spokane Industries has tripled its dust collection capacity utilizing the highest standards in eco-friendly production practices.  A Filter Technologies Model 140 – 1.5 M PB Dust Collector was recently installed at it’s Spokane Investment Casting Division location – augmenting it’s existing Torit Downflo Model DF T4-16 dust collection system.

These upgrades cover all areas of the shop removing fine particulates and pollutants from any possible facility emissions, further purifying the air in the Investment Castings production facility and improving the comfort and safety for all of it’s employees. 

With a future expansion capacity of 11,000 cmf, this new equipment will handily manage the air purification needs in its newly acquired 10,000 sq. ft. expansion.

Visit our website at www.SpokaneIndustries.com to learn more about Spokane Industries and give us your feedback on our new upgrades by posting a comment on our Facebook page.

Casting Demonstration Wows Audience at GSI Manufacturing and Career Expo - Spokane

Casting Demonstration Wows Audience at

GSI Manufacturing and Career Expo

Spokane Industries Steel Castings and Investment Castings Divisions participated in the Greater Spokane Inc. Manufacturing and Career Expo, May 14^th & 15^th at the Spokane Fair and Expo Center.  We  enjoyed immense success with the “Foundry-In-A-Box” demonstrations provided by the American Foundry Society. 

 Foundry-In-A-Box is essentially a hands-on, green sand molding and molten steel pouring demonstration that provides a unique and live demonstration of the casting process.  The kit contains two different molds to choose from, sand augmented with bentonite and light oil to replicate foundry sand, tamping tools, release product, etc. - all that is required to simulate the creation of the cope and drag (top and  bottom) of the sand mold, as done in the foundry.

Once the mold is made and closed, tin is melted in a specially equipped microwave oven and poured into the mold.  At Spokane Industries we specialize in carbon and low alloy steels that require extremely high temperatures to melt.  Given its low melting point and ease of handling, tin is used for demonstration purposes.  

The trade show attendees were able to witness the actual casting process from start to finish.  Casting is a complex process and the hands-on demonstrations vastly enhance our ability to educate the uninitiated about our processes and discuss what makes us unique in the marketplace. 

Our success with these demonstrations is evidenced by show goers overwhelming our neighbor’s booths to get a glimpse of what all the excitement in our booth was about.  We are working on a similar demonstration of our investment casting procedure to show off that process in the future.

The Greater Spokane Manufacturing Expo boasted more than 90 companies and attracted over 1,200 students from regional schools.  It is a great venue to recruit students and other attendees for future employment opportunities, and share the process, applications and benefits of castings.

Foundry In A Box

“The response to our “Foundry in a Box” that we purchased from AFS was amazing!  We are always looking for new ways to get prospective employees interested in the foundry.  This is it!”  

Tracei Scofield, HR Director, Spokane Industries.

Dimensional Verification of Steel and Iron Castings.

by David Jolin, Quality Assurance Manager, Spokane Industries

One key benefit of steel and iron castings is the ability to be formed into complex, organic shapes that are not easily duplicated in fabricated, or even forged parts. Because of this, significant cost and labor savings can be achieved with castings, but these complex shapes can be quite difficult to inspect with traditional dimensional inspection techniques. The typical dimensional testing toolbox requires for numerous specialty items to complete the task adequately.

In addition to the complex shapes that are common for castings, an iron or steel cast surface will be textured by the molding material that the molten metal was poured into, usually bonded sand. This surface texture can affect the accuracy and repeatability of the inspection if care is not taken during the measurement process.

One important issue that complicates the dimensional inspection of iron and steel castings is the draft angle that is required on patterns that are used in sand molds. Draft angles are a manufacturing requirement of the sand mold process that allows the pattern to be drawn back out of the sand after the impression is made. These draft angles are rarely shown on casting blueprints and solid models but are usually noted on the prints as: Draft not to exceed 1.5 Degrees, or something similar.

The dimensional inspection of castings has traditionally relied on the standard hand-tools that reside in most inspectors toolboxes: height gauges, calipers, radius gauges, snap gauges, tape measures, etc. These hand tools continue to play an important role in the inspection process, but, because of the unique issues with castings as noted above, they cant always be relied upon for the complete dimensional inspection that may be required. In addition to standard hand tools, Spokane Industries uses both a traditional, table-based Mitutoyo CMM (Coordinate Measuring Machine) that has a 24x24x18 working volume and a Faro-Arm with an 8-foot sphere working volume.

The traditional CMM is primarily used for the measurement of smaller, investment castings produced in our lost-wax facility as well as for the castings that are further processed by machining. The Faro Arm is a portable, articulating-arm CMM that allows for much more complete and detailed measurements than would be possible with either hand tools or the traditional CMM. Spokane Industries uses a Faro Arm that has an accuracy of plus or minus .003 of an inch. Although this accuracy is not as precise as a standard, table-based CMM it is more than acceptable for the tolerances usually applied to iron and steel castings.

The Faro Arms measurement software contains all the standard measurement tools that are common in most measurement software packages: plane, line, distance, circle, etc., but the Faro Arm gives the dimensional inspector the ability to digitally trace the contours of the casting and compare the CAD data directly against the trace. This tracing capability of the Faro Arm is accomplished by moving the tip of the arm against the feature of the casting that needs measuring.

The software will record the path of the tip as small, stitched-line segments or digital points. These line segments or points can then be measured in the software. Because of this free-form recording of the actual shape of the casting within the software, the dimensional inspector is able to record the true shape of the casting that can be measured, viewed on-screen, reviewed via email, and rechecked even if the casting is no longer present. These features allow Spokane Industries more accurate and quicker dimensional inspections of castings that can be communicated with our customers via traditional dimensional reports, CAD/actual casting scan overlay, or a combination of both.

David Jolin, Quality Assurance Manager at Spokane Industries states, "another advantage of this scanning capability is to reverse-engineer existing castings that may not have a blueprint or cad-data. This is especially helpful if a customer has only a casting to provide to Spokane Industries to copy. Spokane Industries can scan the casting with the Faro Arm, generate a blueprint and CAD model and submit these back to the customer for review and approval. Once approved, Spokane Industries would then create the pattern for the molding operation, and then pour a first part sample. This sample can then be confirmed back against the scan of the original part or to the created and approved blueprint as well."

The realm of dimensional inspection has moved far beyond the days of hand-written dimensional reports listing the results to the nearest fraction of an inch. The advancements that the digital age and computer-aided inspection systems have spawned allow us to produce parts and inspect them with more detail and precision than ever before. This increased detail results in a broader understanding of the casting process that encourages engineers to design even more complex castings. As customer expectations mature, so does the ability of our QA department to meet and exceed them.