Page 17 - ITAtube Journal 1 2019

Technical Papers
Germany’s first cold-hardening phenol 3D printer used in series production picture credit: Casting Solutions AG
construction equipment, agricul- ture and forestry management, solar farms and wind turbines, rolling stock, machine manufac- turing in general and hydraulics, our new product segment”.
Products with greater impact
BDG executive Troglio summa- rises: “Such technologies can help to save a great deal of time and energy when tooling is being built, particularly where proto- types and short series are con- cerned”. The progress that has been made with organic bonding agents and the use of inorganic bonding agents of the kind devel- oped by, for example, foundry sup- plier ASK Chemicals also improves environmental performance. Dr Jens Müller, Research and Devel- opment Manager at ASK Chemi- cals, explains: “We are focussing primarily on increasing the impact of our products and on generating added value for our customers, as – for example – material input can be decreased and the total poten- tial emissions can be reduced as a consequence.”
The company has succeeded in developing the first unmarked phenolic resin in the world for the cold box process in iron casting. A hazardous product is not there- fore needed in this process. Müller adds: “There are other advantages apart from the environmental ben- efits: The particularly high reac- tivity of this new system makes it possible to reduce bonding agent and catalyst volumes in many cases.”
Inorganic bonding systems are becoming increasingly important in aluminium casting. ASK Chemi- cals is also noticing greater
awareness of sustainable prod- ucts. Müller thinks that “this is
driving force behind it – is the digitisation of production. This is creating enormous opportunities not only to improve one’s compet- itive position but also to imple- ment sustainable strategies.
Saving time and money
Simulation and, to an increasing extent, 3D printing are making it possible not merely to produce highly complex parts but also to
replace the energy-/resource-in- tensive and time-consuming trial and error method. The Leipzig team from GF Casting Solutions came to this conclusion too. Series production of sand cores by 3D printing started here in the summer of 2018. “The foundations for this were laid as long as two years ago”, reports Matthias Hein- rich, Director of GF Casting Solu- tions Leipzig GmbH.
As part of the corporate strat- egy for 2020, the Leipzig loca- tion succeeded in persuading the
division management to invest in a 3D series printer for sand cores by presenting a convincing concept. As a result, the location now acts not just as an innovation centre and supplier of prototypes to all the other foundries in the GF Division; it also manufactures in series. Heinrich explains: “The cold-curing phenolic 3D printer in Leipzig is the second of its kind in Germany and the first one in the country that is being used in series production”.
The advantages for customers: considerable time and money is saved in the production of pro- totypes and spare parts. In addi- tion to this, process reliability is increased by the elimination of core assembly, while designers are enthusiastic about the unlimited design potential. There are many different application areas for the castings, which weigh between 100 and 1,000 kg. Heinrich lists them: “They are used in lorries,
ITAtube Journal No1/February 2019
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