Papers by Keyword: Casthouse

Abstract: On April 20, 2010, an explosion rocked the Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico resulting in the deaths of 11 workers. Tens of thousands of documents were released during the investigation for the root cause of the explosion."What emerges is stark and singular fact: crew members died and suffered terrible injuries because every one of the Horizon's defenses failed on April 20. Some were deployed but did not work. Some were activated too late, after they had almost certainly been damaged by fire or explosions. Some were never deployed at all.(Barstow et al. 2011)". Parallels with the aluminium industry standout when comparing the Deepwater Horizon disaster (e.g. violent explosions, damaged equipment, worker deaths and worker injuries). The list of aluminium industry catastrophes is not short: Binzhou Weiqiao Aluminum, Reynolds Alabama, Alcan France, etc. Aluminium plants, just as deepwater oil rigs, value training and safety measures to prevent accidents from occurring. But, on April 20, 2010 every safety measure employed failed, could the safety measures employed in a casthouse to prevent a molten metal steam explosion fail too

Abstract: Abstract Usual production of modern cast houses includes semi products and re-melt products. Billets, slabs and rod belong to the family of semi products, while T-bars, sows and ingots are incorporated in the category of re-melt products. Re-melt forms have been developed to be easily transported and easily processed in locations even far away from the cast house where these have been produced. Unlike sow and T-bars, ingots need to be stacked in bundles and securely strapped to allow safe and easier handling and transportation. Yet, the ingots can be processed one-by-one by small users or can be loaded into the melting furnace bundle-by-bundle. The shape and weight of pure aluminium ingots of the old prior art were determined with two aims: maximization of the production rate and minimization of the production costs: for many years heavy ingots have been produced by pouring molten aluminium into a chain of open top moulds. The traditional complex shape of the ingots was intended to facilitate de-moulding operations and bundle piling. For the above reasons, the most common ingot weight worldwide has ranged, until now, from 22.5 to 23.5kg. Now a new technology launched by Continuus-Properzi offers bigger hourly production rates and handy, safe and sound ingots of 30 pounds (13.6kg) as well as more compact and stable bundles. These advantages are paralleled by low maintenance costs and a very high yield near to 90%. With similar investment and production costs the new technology can give a 30% yearly production increase and winning ingot characteristics.

Abstract: For well over a decade, Almex USA Inc. has been supplying hard alloy casting technology to the aluminum industry. Today, customers on five continents produce 2000 and 7000 series aluminum billets using this technology in sizes ranging from 75mm through to 1080mm in diameter. In order to produce such a range of sizes in hard to cast alloys and to aerospace standards, Almex has imparted complete casthouse process understanding and know-how, along with equipment supply to its customers. This paper provides an overview of Almex’s hard alloy casthouse technology and describes some of the critical parameters which must be controlled throughout the process route in order to produce defect free alloys for forging, extrusion and flat rolled applications. Explanation is also made of the microstructural requirements of the as cast product and how these influence the final product; along with the range of quality control solutions supplied by Almex to ensure these requirements are met on a continuous and repeatable basis by Almex’s technology users.