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Article no. 1: NEWCAST Foundries
Foundries manufacture high-tech products with good prospects
NEWCAST 2015 – International Trade Fair for Precision Castings
Foundry-manufactured products are in great demand in all technical areas
thanks to the many different ways in which workpieces can be formed and
the different physical properties that can be combined in them. Small parts
like bone implants, vehicle components for such products as engine blocks,
pistons, housings, shafts and chassis parts as well as enormous diesel
engines for ships are, for example, manufactured by casting. Foundries are
therefore a key high-tech industrial sector with good prospects. According to
the European Foundry Association (CAEF), the central association of the
European foundry trade associations, there are more than 4,000 foundries
that process ferrous materials or non-ferrous metals with a total of over
200,000 employees in Europe alone. Global casting production is likely to
reach the order of 100 million tonnes in total in 2015.
The following article covers casting materials, the special features of the
main casting processes and the ways in which foundries design and
manufacture customised parts for other industries. Development times are,
in general, becoming shorter, while production batches are becoming
smaller. Many products are required to be lightweight structures and efficient
use of energy and raw materials is on the agenda. For a long time now, it
has been standard procedure to use computer-based processes to develop,
optimise and manufacture castings and the moulds and cores needed to
produce them and to control, synchronise and monitor the many different
processes that are carried out at foundries. Development is continuing on an
ongoing basis in the areas of casting materials, moulding materials and
casting processes too.
NEWCAST 2015, the International Trade Fair for Precision Castings, which
is taking place in Düsseldorf from 16. to 20. June 2015, will be giving an
insight into the castings world, including ideas for the use of castings in
technical structures and the prospects for future technical developments in
foundry production technology.
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Long tradition
Parts with any required shape, including internal cavities, can be
manufactured in a single operation by casting. Forming is carried out by
pouring molten metal into a mould, where it adapts to the shape of the mould
and solidifies. At the process engineering level, a distinction is made
between lost mould casting, which is also called sand casting, and
permanent mould casting, including die-casting. Cores fitted in the mould
create cavities inside castings. In sand casting, the mould and cores are
generally made from special sand to which bonding agents have been
added and can only be used for one casting operation. The mould and the
cores break when the casting is removed from the mould. The sand can be
reprocessed and 95% of it can be used again. In the other processes, which
are used primarily for casting non-ferrous metals, the moulds consist of cast
iron or heat-resistant steel and are used over and over again. Permanent
metal moulds have the advantage over lost moulds that the heat
transmission capacity is considerably higher, which helps to cool the molten
metal down faser. This in turn gives the casting a finer structure with
favourable mechanical properties.
Metal casting materials
Castable metals are traditionally divided up into ferrous casting materials
and non-ferrous casting materials. The first group includes such cast iron
materials as cast iron with lamellar graphite, cast iron with spheroidal
graphite, black and white malleable iron and casting steel. The non-ferrous
metal casting materials include aluminium, magnesium, copper, titanium,
lead, tin, zinc, nickel and other non-ferrous metals as well as castable alloys
of them.
Innovative – with an exciting future
The automotive industry is the biggest customer of the foundry industry and
its most important innovation driver. According to data collected by the
Association of the German Foundry Industry (BDG), more than 75% of the
castings manufactured from non-ferrous metals and more than 50% of the
castings manufactured from ferrous materials are supplied to the automotive
industry. Automotive engineering applications account for almost 60% of
total casting production volume, followed by machine manufacturing (25 to
30%). Further major industrial customers are power plant construction and
electrical engineering, railways and rail manufacturing, aerospace, building,
shipbuilding, marine engineering and medical engineering. Progress in these
industries is attributable to a large extent to the developments made by the
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companies in the foundry industry. The know-how acquired in this context is
a stable basis for facilitating satisfaction of the growing requirements of
customers and for enabling them to operate successfully in what is an
increasingly fierce competitive environment.
State of the art and trends
Like companies in other industrial sectors, foundries need to keep their
operating costs low, with a particularly close watch being kept on energy
consumption. Foundries require very large amounts of energy to smelt
casting materials and keep them warm, to pour castings and, sometimes, to
give castings heat treatment too. This means that energy is a very important
cost factor. Foundries must also be in a position to manufacture
sophisticated products with shorter and shorter development times.
Production batches are becoming smaller and many products are required to
be lightweight structures. It has been standard procedure to use electronic
systems for a long time now. They are essential to control and co-ordinate
the many different process operations, such as production planning, casting
preparation, temperature control of the molten material, casting process
procedure and treatment of the castings. Sand casting also involves
production of the moulds and cores, emptying of the moulding boxes after
casting, “cleaning” of the castings and reprocessing of the mould and core
sands. Computer-aided (CA) systems also help in designing castings,
moulds and cores. With CA systems, it is possible to simulate all the
processes in a casting during casting and solidification. Information about
filling of the mould, the structure created when the molten material solidifies
and the mechanical properties influenced as a result, internal tension,
defects and their impact on casting quality is obtained in this way. It is also
possible for foundries and customers to co-operate on the development and
optimisation of castings via CA systems.
The production of sand casting moulds, which used to be very laborious, is
being replaced to an increasing extent by computer-aided 3D printing
processes, with which sand moulds and cores bonded with synthetic resins
can be manufactured relatively quickly. 3D printers help to reduce production
costs and minimise storage requirements.
Development is continuing on an ongoing basis in the areas of casting
materials, mould materials and casting processes. Research scientists are,
for example, working on cast iron with spheroidal graphite that has a high
silicon content. Castings made from it have more consistent hardness and
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strength distribution and can be processed more effectively. These materials
make it possible to reduce the wall thicknesses of castings, which helps to
meet demands for energy and raw material savings and lightweight
structures. Promising efforts are also being made to combine different
materials, such as steel and aluminium, with each other during or
immediately after casting, in order to take optimum advantage of their
properties. Special die-casting processes known as squeezing processes, in
which the castings, non-ferrous metals with relatively low melting
temperatures, are subsequently compacted before final solidification, are a
relatively new development.
The NEWCAST 2015 trade fair
With
their
products,
foundries
promote,
among
other
things,
the
development of such innovative sectors as energy, lightweight structures
and mobility. At NEWCAST 2015, the International Trade Fair for Precision
Castings, foundries will be presenting their technical skills in the
manufacturing field. The range of exhibits includes iron, steel, grey and
malleable castings, products from non-ferrous metal foundries and various
services. NEWCAST 2015 is meant primarily for designers, production
managers and buyers from the automotive sector and other areas of industry
that need castings for their products or supply an alternative to workpieces
manufactured by other processes. NEWCAST is taking place in Düsseldorf
from 16. to 20. June 2015, at the same time as the trade fairs GIFA, METEC
and THERMPROCESS that feature associated fields and all share the same
motto (The Bright World of Metals).
The Bright World of Metals:
The four international technology trade fairs GIFA (International Foundry Trade Fair),
METEC (International Metallurgical Trade Fair), THERMPROCESS (International
Trade Fair for Thermo Process Technology) and NEWCAST (International Trade Fair
for Precision Castings) are being held in Düsseldorf from 16. to 20. June 2015.
Visitors from all over the world will be coming to the city on the River Rhine for five
days at this time to focus on castings, foundry technology, metallurgy and thermo
process technology. A programme of high-quality additional events will again be
taking place alongside the trade fairs, involving seminars, international congresses
and lecture series. All four trade fairs and the programmes co-ordinated with them
will be concentrating on the issue of energy and resource efficiency. A total of 79,000
experts from 83 different countries visited the stands of the 1,958 exhibitors at the
previous events in 2011. Further information is available in the Internet at
www.gifa.de, www.metec.de, www.thermprocess.de and www.newcast.de.
Messe Düsseldorf organises not only GIFA, METEC, THERMPROCESS and
NEWCAST with the joint motto “The Bright World of Metals” but also other highquality trade fairs for the metallurgical and foundry industries all over the world. They
include FOND-EX (International Foundry Fair) and Stainless in the Czech Republic,
Metallurgy India, Metallurgy-Litmash (International Trade Fair for Metallurgy
Machinery, Plant Technology & Products) and Aluminium Non-Ferrous in Russia,
indometal in Indonesia, metals middle east in Dubai, ITPS (International
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Thermprocess Summit) Americas and Asia and the Aluminium trade fairs in China,
India, the United Arab Emirates and Brazil. The range of events held for the metal
industries at the Düsseldorf location is rounded off by: Valve World Expo
(International Trade Fair and Congress for Industrial Valves and Fittings) and ITPS
Düsseldorf as well as the international trade fair ALUMINIUM organised by Reed
Exhibitions and Composites Europe.
Further information and photos are available at www.newcast.de
Press Department
GIFA, METEC, THERMPROCESS, NEWCAST 2015
Tania Vellen
0049211/4560-518
[email protected]
Brigitte Küppers
0049211/4560-929
[email protected]
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