WEIR MINERALS APPLIES CASTING INNOVATION AT ISANDO PLANT

Driving down element turnaround time whereas enhancing quality and decreasing waste is being achieved at Weir Minerals Africa’s exciting new Replicast Plant in Isando, Gauteng.
Umar Smith, plant supervisor at Weir Minerals Africa’s Isando facility, highlights that the innovative growth allows the company to provide more parts at a time – and extra rapidly. This will assist in meeting rising buyer demand, whereas additionally reducing rework and wastage.
“As part of our Project Vuka, this new plant allows us to cast a quantity of small components per batch somewhat than simply one by one,” says Smith. “We can also scale back our knock-out instances from days to only a few hours.”
The state-of-the-art amenities allow Weir Minerals Africa to forged high chrome components weighing up to 250 kg. There are two phases to the new course of, he explains, which makes use of polystyrene to create moulds. The first phase is the polystyrene moulding process, which occurs after the polystyrene beads have been expanded. เกจ์ลมsumo is where the ramming, pouring and demoulding takes place.
In contrast to the standard moulding line – the place resin and catalyst are used to bind sand – the Replicast Plant makes use of silica sand of 30-35 AFS grade together with the polystyrene mould, he says. The system entails a vacuum bin, from which all the air is eliminated to compress the sand.
“The absence of resin and catalyst – as well as having no clamping process – leads to less scrap being produced, and due to this fact brings operational financial savings,” he says. “The high quality of castings is also raised, with a greater floor finish and fewer defects.”
He notes that the geometrical stability of components is improved, as there may be less fettling of the finished product thereby reducing dimensional variation between the same elements. This in flip contributes to the reliability of the tools using these parts. He says the foundry may even realise vital environmental benefits as a result of using no chemical substances within the sand.
“This new plant aligns well with our company sustainability goals, making certain that our processes are not solely compliant however constantly cut back our environmental impact,” says Smith. “Our new moulding techniques be sure that fewer gases are emitted during the casting process, and there are zero emissions of dangerous substances such as benzene.”
The new expertise can additionally be resulting in much less frequent disposal of silica sand, and the sand itself is more environmentally friendly because it contains no resin or acid.
“A exceptional aspect of growing this new plant was the fact that it was accomplished with our native expertise and largely during the COVID-19 lockdowns,” he says. “Despite the novelty of this know-how, and the logistical challenges created by the pandemic, it was efficiently carried out on time and within finances.”
The plant consists of greater than sixteen,000 individual elements, and uses over 1,900 m of cabling, 300 m of water piping and fifty five tons of metal.
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