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Our shop switched from sand to ceramic foam filters for our aluminum pours about six months ago.
We were getting a lot of scrap from inclusions, maybe 15% on some jobs. The boss brought in these new filters after a trade show. The first month was rough, learning the right preheat time, but by month three our scrap rate dropped to under 5%. The metal flow is just cleaner and more even. Anyone else made a big change to their gating system that paid off like this?
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tessalane17d ago
Tbh Kevinallen asking about preheat time is like asking a new parent how long it takes to get a baby to sleep - there's no one answer and you're just gonna have to suffer through it for a bit. We had a guy on our crew who kept trying to rush it and ended up with a filter that looked like a cracked dinner plate. Once we all got on the same page with the preheat, it was like the metal knew exactly where to go. The first month was basically us arguing over who forgot to set the timer, but by month three we were high-fiving every pour.
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garcia.cameron3mo ago
Man that's awesome to hear. We swapped to ceramic foam filters for our ductile iron a couple years back and it was the same story. The learning curve on preheat was real but once we got it dialed in the difference was night and day. Our casting quality went way up and rework just fell off a cliff. Best process change we ever made.
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