Driving down part turnaround time whereas improving quality and reducing waste is being achieved at Weir Minerals Africa’s exciting new Replicast Plant in Isando, Gauteng.
Umar Smith, plant supervisor at Weir Minerals Africa’s Isando facility, highlights that the revolutionary improvement allows the corporate to supply more components at a time – and extra shortly. This will assist in meeting rising buyer demand, whereas additionally reducing rework and wastage.
“As a part of our Project Vuka, this new plant allows us to cast a number of small components per batch rather than simply one by one,” says Smith. “We can even cut back our knock-out times from days to only a couple of hours.”
The state-of-the-art services allow Weir Minerals Africa to cast excessive chrome components weighing as much as 250 kg. There are two phases to the model new course of, he explains, which makes use of polystyrene to create moulds. ราคาเกจวัดแรงดันลม is the polystyrene moulding course of, which happens after the polystyrene beads have been expanded. The second part is where the ramming, pouring and demoulding takes place.
In distinction to the standard moulding line – the place resin and catalyst are used to bind sand – the Replicast Plant uses silica sand of 30-35 AFS grade together with the polystyrene mould, he says. The system involves a vacuum bin, from which all of the air is removed to compress the sand.
“The absence of resin and catalyst – as properly as having no clamping process – ends in much less scrap being produced, and therefore brings operational financial savings,” he says. “The high quality of castings can additionally be raised, with a better floor end and fewer defects.”
He notes that the geometrical stability of parts is improved, as there’s much less fettling of the finished product thereby decreasing dimensional variation between the same elements. This in flip contributes to the reliability of the tools using those elements. He says the foundry may also realise significant environmental benefits because of using no chemical compounds within the sand.
“This new plant aligns properly with our corporate sustainability targets, guaranteeing that our processes aren’t solely compliant however constantly reduce our environmental influence,” says Smith. “Our new moulding systems make sure that fewer gases are emitted through the casting process, and there are zero emissions of harmful substances corresponding to benzene.”
The new technology can additionally be resulting in less frequent disposal of silica sand, and the sand itself is extra environmentally friendly as it incorporates no resin or acid.
“A exceptional side of developing this new plant was the fact that it was carried out with our native skills and largely through the COVID-19 lockdowns,” he says. “Despite the novelty of this expertise, and the logistical challenges created by the pandemic, it was efficiently carried out on time and within budget.”
The plant contains more than 16,000 individual components, and uses over 1,900 m of cabling, 300 m of water piping and 55 tons of steel.
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