- Story of the Steel Casting Design Pathway
Target Audience: OEM Casting Designers & Buyers, Steel Casting ProducersThis is the introduction to the entire SFSA webinar series “Steel Casting Design & Manufacturing Engineering.”The series is presented in the context of a story: How Michael Gwyn, career-long SFSA member and 25-year steel
casting producer, discovered innovative principles for excellence in steel casting design. Webinar 1 is glimpse
into his “Trail Map” for both design geometry and resulting producibility.
View the Story of the Steel Casting Design Pathway - Steel Casting Geometry: Freeway to Producer Response
Target Audience: OEM Casting Designers & Buyers, Steel Casting ProducersThis is an overview of the principles of excellence in steel casting design geometry with the benefits that flow down from geometry excellence, through the producer, to better prices and shorter lead-times. Conversely, the consequences of the typical “fair-to-poor” design geometry flow through the producer’s tooling design, mold process engineering, and finishing operations… all at higher cost.
View Steel Casting Geometry: Freeway to Producer Response - Castability Geometry
Target Audience: OEM Casting Designers, Steel Casting Producer Technical Sales & MarketingThis episode in the SFSA Casting Design & Manufacturing Engineering webinar series is foundational. A critical distinction is made between the age-old concept of “Alloy Castability” and the discovery that CASTING GEOMETRY enables whatever “Alloy Castability” exists to be accommodated. In other words, and especially for steel casting alloys, the concept of CASTABILITY GEOMETRY enables even an alloy with poor castability to “LIKE” the mold cavity geometry that it flows into and solidifies. This discovery is critical to OEM casting designers.
View Castability Geometry - Castability Geometry Differs by Steel Alloy Type – Parallel Pathways
Target Audience:OEM Casting Designers, Steel Casting Producer Technical Sales & MarketingWhile SFSA Webinar 3 is foundational for the entire “Informational” and “More Depth” series, this episode is nearly a twin. The baseline for Castability Geometry is the family of Carbon & Low Alloy steels made in room temperature sand or ceramic molds; Deviating from that baseline in varying degrees are the High Alloy steels. Those deviations are grouped among the High Alloy steels in this episode, and how to modify Castability Geometry for each High Alloy group is shown in models and simulations.
View Castability Geometry Differs by Steel Alloy Type – Parallel Pathways - Interior Mold Cavity Geometry Junctions – A Pathway Entanglement
Target Audience: OEM Casting Designers, Steel Casting Producer Technical Sales & Marketing, Producer Foundry EngineersEpisode 5 in the SFSA Casting Design & Manufacturing Engineering webinar series addresses the problems and solutions for thickness differences in the mold cavity interior regions. Interior thickness differences result from junctions of shapes. An example would be a wall from the casting’s exterior joining a cylindrical boss in the middle of the mold cavity. Sometimes the thicker section is functional, like a boss for a fastener or bearing. Often it is increased thickness for resisting stress structurally.If a junction with more thickness occurs along the perimeter of a steel casting design, there is no problem. A riser can easily be attached to the perimeter to feed the additional thickness. However, in the mold’s interior, feeding that thickness is not so easy. How to resolve that difficulty in both the OEM’s design geometry and the producer’s tooling design is our subject, and it is necessary for successful Castability Geometry. And… how to do so for steel alloy sub-groups whose Castabilty Geometry parameters are different.
View Interior Mold Cavity Geometry Junctions – A Pathway Entanglement - Process-Dominated Castability Geometry – A Fork in the Pathway
Target Audience: OEM Casting Designers, Steel Casting Producer Technical Sales & Marketing, Producer Foundry EngineersThe production of steel castings is dominated by room temperature molds, primarily in sand mold cavity-making processes. Castability Geometry for those mold types has been well-defined in episodes 3, 4, and 5. However, a very significant sub-set of steel castings are poured in hot ceramic shell investment molds. This episode 6 addresses the differences in OEM Castability Geometry choices in design AND producer manufacturing engineering principles for the three steel alloy sub-groups… when produced as investment castings in hot molds.Steel casting producers in the hot ceramic shell process typically pour a wide variety of ferrous alloys. Process-Dominated Castability Geometry explains why. Design and manufacturing engineering principles for hot ceramic shell molds are illustrated in models and simulations.
View Process-Dominated Castability Geometry – A Fork in the Pathway - Welded Steel Fabrications: A Dead-End Side Track
Target Audience: OEM Casting Designers, Steel Casting Producer Technical Sales & MarketingThis webinar episode is a highly visual “peek under the design engineer’s tent” revealing the reasons for and consequences of fabricating structural components by welding wrought steel pieces together. And… why, after all has been invested in the fabricated design, there is almost always a significant return on investment when starting all over with a casting design.Conversion of fabrications to castings is a large market segment dominated by ductile iron casting conversions… and that is good for all concerned. But… when the combination of high stress, allowing deflection, long cyclic life, and low mass is the requirement, steel castings are unsurpassed.Why steel castings dominate, when capability is really important, is explained with simple metallurgical and structural design reasons…. and a case study. The case study is a capstone for Episodes 1 through 5, showing how Castability Geometry in steel casting design works. And, a glimpse of a future episode explaining the overlay of Structural Geometry on the Castability Geometry foundation.
View Welded Steel Fabrications: A Dead-End Side Track - Net Shapes Machined from Wrought Steel: A Shortcut to the Dead-End Side Track
Target Audience: OEM Casting Designers, Steel Casting Producer Technical Sales & MarketingA second alternative to steel casting design, aside from welded steel fabrications, is forming a component’s final net shape entirely by machining. The material is a wrought block, bar, or forged pre-form of steel… actually any metal, because this design alternative is not just for steel castings.Today’s CNC machining centers with multi-axis tool paths combined with multi-axis fixture pallet movements can whittle out virtually any net shape with the exception of shapes having complex, narrow, curved interior passageways.Fully machined from wrought stock is a design alternative especially attractive for military and aerospace components. Mechanical properties are known with high certainty, prototyping is easy to match with production reality, prototypes have very high probability of successful high cycle durability testing, and tooling up, getting through prototyping, testing, and into production is usually quickest.So, why is it the “shortcut to the dead-end side track?” The answer is the high cost of fully machined production components. Being quick and capable was great, but the reality of lots of chips at the bottom of the machining center and not much net shape becomes a cost problem.Why to choose NOT to get stuck in the first place is our subject in Webinar 8. Our target audience is OEM design engineers. In addition to the details of “why NOT take the shortcut,” there are two short, helpful “main-line tracks” for design engineers: 1) Why manufacturing engineering of a casting design… by the OEM Design Team… at the early design stage, is very powerful, and 2) Why to-scale, proportional, isometric pencil sketches are very efficient starting points for casting solid models… and HOW to make them.
View Net Shapes Machined from Wrought Steel: A Shortcut to the Dead-End Side Track
