Implementation of Metal Casting Best Practices - EERE - U.S. ...

D. Steel Foundry-2
Plant Profile
Steel Foundry-2 is a large foundry that employs 100+ people. It produces large carbon and alloy
steel castings for the mining, cement, and power generation industries. Their castings range in
size from 500 to 100,000 pounds.
The process flow of the facility is typical for a steel foundry and begins in the design phase,
where the facility designs the casting using the latest in computer modeling techniques. Once the
foundry has designed the casting with the proper rigging system (e.g., gates, risers, chills), the
design is sent to the pattern shop where the pattern is constructed.
Once the pattern is constructed, the facility proceeds to build the casting molds. The facility uses
no-bake sand, specifically developed by the foundry, as their molding medium and a binder that
produces no visible emissions. A computer controls the sand operation and determines the
mixture and the number of patterns that need to produced. Also, the facility constructs large
molds within pits to produce large castings. These large molds take approximately one week to
build and command a rather large footprint within the facility. Due to the considerable time
required in constructing the large molds, and the large quantity of metal poured into these pit
molds, these molds are conservatively designed since any error could result in a large financial
loss.
The facility uses two basic electric arc furnaces (capacities are 5 and 65 tons) for melting. They
worked with their power utility to determine the most cost-effective time at which to melt, which
proved to be the non-peak load hours from 9:00 p.m. to 9:00 a.m. Operating the plant on this
schedule saved $250,000 per year on the electricity bill.
The facility transfers molten metal from the melting furnaces to a holding furnace and, when
ready to pour on to large crane-driven ladles for pouring into the molds. After the castings have
solidified in the molds, they are shaken out, cleaned, and machined. In some cases, castings also
are heat treated.
Onsite Assessment
During the site visit, the assessment team was accompanied by a technical expert from the Steel
Founders’ Association of America (SFSA), the facility’s foundry manager of technical services,
an environmental engineer, and a manager of the pattern shop. During the morning, plant
officials provided an overview of the plant operations and discussed with the assessment team
the extent to which Metal Casting R&D had been implemented at the facility. Plant managers
also provided an overview of measures they had implemented to combat rising energy costs.
This was followed by the assessment team providing an overview of the suite of free software
tools and services offered by ITP’s BestPractices subprogram. The overview included informing
plant managers as to the benefits they could attain by implementing the PHAST, AirMaster+,
and MotorMaster+ tools. The assessment team also discussed with the plant personnel the
savings that other steel foundries that were subjected to an IAC assessment had realized. As was
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