Olaf M Kramer of Heinrich Wagner Sinto Maschinenfabrik GmbH (HWS) highlighted to Castcon delegates the importance of digitisation and energy efficiency in the sector.
To survive in international competition, a company must produce high quality products at an attractive price. What sounds simple poses immense challenges for our customers due to changing framework conditions.
The demands on us, the foundries and plant manufacturers come from a wide variety of directions:
- Society calls on us to significantly reduce energy demand.
- We compete with attractive jobs.
- International competition puts us under pressure with low labour costs, unequal competitive conditions and state subsidies.
This list goes on. But what can we do?
One approach that brings immediate success is to increase efficiency through:
- Energy related optimisation of the foundry.
- Monitoring of the entire process chain.
- Reduction of the scrap rate.
ENERGY RELATED OPTIMISATION OF THE FOUNDRY
Even during the design of the systems, modern foundries are planned in such a way that the energy consumption is limited as much as possible. For this purpose, we use FEM and FEA. In simple terms, this means that we build as solidly as necessary and as light as possible. Every kilogram of moving masses saved reduces the energy requirement. Drives can also be designed more efficiently.
Drive technology has made quantum leaps in terms of energy efficiency. Both electric and hydraulic drives can recuperate. With modern control technology, these drives are almost shock free, highly efficient and standard in good systems.
In hydraulics, highly efficient servo pumps are used to optimise idle times as well as oil heating and cooling.
MONITORING OF THE ENTIRE PROCESS CHAIN
In recent years, HWS products have been given a comprehensive range of new additional functions thanks to networked control technology. Far beyond condition monitoring, sensors monitor machine technology, especially the production process, such as monitoring the mould hardness on the model during pressing.
In the past, the focus was primarily on quality data. With derived sustainability and efficiency data from these parameters, new and intelligent control and regulation specifications for the operation of the plants were developed. One of these innovations is HWS’s so called ‘green button’ function – a highly efficient automatic shutdown of the hydraulics that significantly reduces energy costs at idle.
A completely different goal is the unambiguous identification of the castings. At the last GIFA, the laser marking process of the SINTOKOGIO Group attracted a lot of attention. It wasn’t just the experts who recognised that the marking of cores and even greensand moulds, transferred to the castings, closes exactly the gap that had always been desired to be able to assign the entire production chain to a specific casting. By means of the identification number or a QR code on the casting, batch data of the sand preparation, all measuring and control parameters of the moulding line, history data of the cores, and all data of the casting furnace or casting machine can be assigned to the casting.
All this plant, process and casting specific data is collected in the plant control system and can be transferred to any MES or ERP system.
This creates a complete history of the casting piece throughout the entire manufacturing process. This is exactly what foundries, but also the customers of the products, have always wanted.
REDUCTION OF THE SCRAP RATE
A consistent focus on good parts in conjunction with lessons learned results in a reduction in waste as a waste product.
With a consistent good part orientation in control technology, the aim is to save any subsequent resources if a mould does not meet the quality requirements:
If the sand does not meet the specifications, it is discharged directly. If the pressing pressure of the moulding machine is not within the set specifications, the mould is marked as ‘defective’ so that the downstream machines know:
- No pouring funnel, no air holes to drill.
- No cores and no filters used.
- The mould is not to be poured off .
- The mould box is routed through the cooling lines by the shortest possible route so as not to occupy unnecessary cooling capacities.
It would be fatal if bad castings were only noticed in the fettling shop or, even worse, only at the customer's premises. These measures are intended to rule this out.
RESULT
Within the last thirty years, production in the foundry has changed significantly due to the arrival of high tech. If foundry personnel receive digital support in addition to the craftsmanship skills they have learned, this gives them the opportunity to produce the perfect casting piece reproducibly. Until now, foundries had to balance different variables in such a way that an acceptable product was created in the end. A consistent focus on good parts means that the foundry process can be regarded almost as a constant.
So why waste time troubleshooting? It is better to use the time gained to optimise the process and products to the limits of what is feasible. This also inspires young people to work for us and this is exactly what causes the desired technological and competitive advantage.
This is not just an issue for new installations. Increasing efficiency is explicitly also a real issue for existing foundries.
It is the clever ideas and a consistent focus on efficiency that minimise the life cycle costs and thus the unit costs of each casting.
Contact: Olaf M Kramer, Heinrich Wagner Sinto Machinenfabrik GmbH, Sintokogio Group, Germany. Tel: +49 2752 907 240, email: [email protected] web: www.wagner-sinto.de
To view accompanying images for this article refer to the full printed version of the June/July 2025 issue of Foundry Trade Journal.