Driving down element turnaround time while enhancing quality and lowering 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 enables the company to supply more elements at a time – and extra quickly. This will assist in meeting rising customer demand, while also lowering rework and wastage.
“As a part of our Project Vuka, this new plant permits us to cast multiple small components per batch rather than just one at a time,” says Smith. “We also can scale back our knock-out instances from days to only a couple of hours.”
The state-of-the-art facilities allow Weir Minerals Africa to forged excessive chrome parts weighing up to 250 kg. There are two phases to the new process, he explains, which makes use of polystyrene to create moulds. The first section is the polystyrene moulding process, which happens after the polystyrene beads have been expanded. The second phase is where the ramming, pouring and demoulding takes place.
In contrast to the normal moulding line – where resin and catalyst are used to bind sand – the Replicast Plant uses silica sand of 30-35 AFS grade together with the polystyrene mould, he says. The system includes a vacuum bin, from which all of the air is removed to compress the sand.
“ pressure gauge วัด แรง ดัน of resin and catalyst – as properly as having no clamping course of – leads to less scrap being produced, and therefore brings operational savings,” he says. “The quality of castings can also be raised, with a better surface end and fewer defects.”
He notes that the geometrical stability of elements is improved, as there may be less fettling of the completed product thereby decreasing dimensional variation between the identical parts. This in turn contributes to the reliability of the equipment using these elements. He says the foundry may also realise vital environmental advantages on account of utilizing no chemicals in the sand.
“This new plant aligns nicely with our company sustainability targets, making certain that our processes are not solely compliant but constantly scale back our environmental impact,” says Smith. “Our new moulding methods ensure that fewer gases are emitted through the casting process, and there are zero emissions of harmful substances similar to benzene.”
The new technology can also 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 facet of creating this new plant was the reality that it was accomplished with our native abilities and largely during the COVID-19 lockdowns,” he says. “Despite the novelty of this technology, and the logistical challenges created by the pandemic, it was successfully applied on time and within finances.”
The plant contains more than 16,000 particular person elements, and uses over 1,900 m of cabling, 300 m of water piping and 55 tons of steel.
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