CPT International 04/2015

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K AUTOMATION Author: Michael Franken, German Foundry Association, Düsseldorf Unique in the world This year in March, the Kurtz Ersa group officially inaugurated its “Smart Foundry” at the production site in Hasloch, Germany. The construction of the new foundry had been meticulously planned for several years and involved an investment volume of some 12 million Euros. It incorporates numerous elements of what is referred to as “Foundry Industry 4.0” A special suction system extracts and filters emissions arising during treatment of the melt (Photos: Klaus Bolz, Kurtz Ersa) Something is different in this foundry. But what is it? Is it the transport routes? Could be. They are extremely spacious, well conceived and perfectly interconnected. What else is different? Is it the fact that there is virtually no dust on the floor? This is certainly unusual for a busy hand-molding foundry. As a matter of fact what you see here is certainly not what you would expect from an iron foundry. And something else is striking: The newly built bay for what is actually a classical hand-molding shop is not only flooded with light but also extremely neatly arranged. It actually looks as if it had just been tidied up. Our first impression is that things work somewhat differently here. And then LENA appears at the far end of the bay where uncountable flasks are neatly stacked for intermediate storage. Every second, LENA flashes headlights arranged at “her” extreme ends on the left and right, indicating that a massive “something” weighing several tonnes is hovering towards us. “We had spent a lot of time inspecting transport systems in operation in different areas of industry and examining and weighing their pros and cons until we eventually came across a solution applied in the aviation industry,” explains Rainer Kurtz, Chief Executive Officer of Kurtz Holding GmbH & Co. KG. While Rainer Kurtz looks to the right into the molding shop, TINA is approaching from behind, some 30 m away from him. TINA is another heavyweight transporter driven by four electric motors and weighing almost 10 t. Both of them, LENA and TINA are carrying flasks coming from the casting 32 Casting Plant & Technology 4/<strong>2015</strong>
shop and weighing several tonnes. At Airbus, such transporters guarantee a continuous flow of production in aircraft construction. Being cooperatively operating transport systems, they take decisions autonomously but in line with the common production target. They make an important contribution to the success of flow production at Airbus. If those flashing, orange-painted cubic objects were able to help producing Airbus components fully automatically, in series and just in time, why shouldn’t that work with the production of castings? “Our answer to that question was: Let’s build a Smart Foundry!”, remembers Rainer Kurtz. Everything fits together perfectly As if driven by magic, the hovering transporters made by WFT, Sulzbach, Germany, manoeuvre the massive flasks to their assigned destinations for cooling. They move from A to B to C and to D. Each letter stands for a possible stopping station, a previously calculated position of the production chain. What looks so simple, depends on meticulous timing. Everything has been calculated down to the smallest detail, stored in an SAP data pool and takes place virtually fully automatically. The highly sophisticated and advanced software programs tell TINA and LENA where to go next in the cooling bay covering an area of almost 3,000 m 2 . The risk of colliding is virtually zero. This is important as the mobile transporters carry extremely heavy loads. They can easily handle payloads of up to 80 t without restricting their mobility. In addition to TINA and LENA, two other “strong girls”, called MARIE and EMMA, are taking care of the heavy molding boxes that day during the morning shift. Amidst the transporters’ flashing headlights and humming sound, a sweeper speeds over the concrete floor, which looks as if it had just been freshly polished. While the transporters are unmanned, the brand new sweeper is steered by a hu- View of the systems-controlled cooling bay, which also features a technologically advanced air conditioning system LENA takes a transport pallet and a flask to the next work station. Ever since its official start-up, the system has been working without problems Hard to believe: the transporters move fully automatically from one cooled flask to the next Casting Plant & Technology 4/<strong>2015</strong> 33
Page 1 and 2: www.giesserei-verlag.de December 20
Page 3 and 4: EDITORIAL K On the way to a smart f
Page 5 and 6: CASTING 4 | 2015 PLANT AND TECHNOLO
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Page 13 and 14: employed to exercise a positive inf
Page 15 and 16: Bühler Services Modular, individua
Page 17 and 18: Ejector Die Half Cavity Gating Bisc
Page 19 and 20: Figure 1: Strict quality control of
Page 21 and 22: tions can be provided that combine
Page 23 and 24: The ae group’s Sole Director Klau
Page 25 and 26: An employee inspects the accuracy o
Page 27 and 28: plastic. Then there are door frames
Page 29 and 30: Limitations of existing equipment T
Page 31: several thousand tonnes of material
Page 35 and 36: Smart Foundry project. It is extrem
Page 37 and 38: The sand regeneration system in the
Page 39 and 40: Figure 2: Dosing (right) and motion
Page 41 and 42: Casting Special North America Photo
Page 43 and 44: SPECIAL purchases precision castpar
Page 45 and 46: Figure 1: voestalpine Nortrak casts
Page 47 and 48: Figure 3: voestalpine Nortrak, Deca
Page 49 and 50: The system evaluation process Since
Page 51 and 52: K NEWS EUROGUSS Europe’s meeting
Page 53 and 54: KSB GROUP New foundry in Grovetown
Page 55 and 56: C M Y CM MY CY CMY K FAE Measuremen
Page 57 and 58: Abrasives 64 pages, English, German
Page 59 and 60: K IMPRINT PREVIEW / IMPRINT K Previ

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