Conveyors smooth aluminium castings flow
May 22, 2006 – 11:25 amA conveyor system designed to improve production facilities for an aluminium foundry enables activities operating at different rates to function at maximum efficiency.
Conveyors smooth aluminium castings flow Vanriet has recently installed a conveyor system designed to improve production facilities for the Alcoa Lingotes British Casting Centre in Leyland, Lancashire. The system holds components and assemblies between processes, enabling activities operating at different rates to function at maximum efficiency. As a result the British Casting Centre is able to manufacture an increasing volume of aluminium components for the European automotive industry.
The Alcoa Lingotes British Casting Centre is one of several European locations supplying carmakers such as Volvo, Jaguar, BMW, Audi, Ferrari and Mercedes Benz with a wide range of automotive components.
Alcoa’s patented green sand casting process produces high performance, complex shapes and relatively thin wall, pressure-tight castings.
Current applications include engine mounts, brake callipers, bumper brackets and body structure castings.
The process involves filling green sand mould against gravity, which provides highly flexible, high volume production with rapid cycle times.
Alcoa’s Graham Brooks explained:’ The conveyor system provides an effective buffer between the casting process and downstream operations, balancing production flow between workstations so that each operation can perform at its most efficient speed.
An overhead conveyor carries trees holding multiple components from the casting line, to the first process where they are shot-blasted to clean off excess sand.
Individual items are then separated by band saw and placed in a tote on the Vanriet roller conveyor.
Totes are held on the conveyor and fed as required to the trim press to remove minor edges and offcuts.
Alternatively a two level belt conveyor carries individual components secondary saw and fettling processes, and finally to an X-ray machine for quality checking.
Following heat treatment components are taken to further operations including dye penetrant, CNC machining and washing before reaching the finished goods store.
Waste aluminium from trees, shot blasting and other off cuts are carried by an under floor conveyor and fed into bins for recycling.
Vanriet also designed and installed a number of safety access gates, to allow fast and direct access to various parts of the installation, helping to reduce travelling distances during normal operations.
Paul Farmey of Vanriet summed up:’ Projects such as this underline the need for integrating handling and storage procedures at all stages of manufacturing, not just processing finished goods and components.
With the high cost of modern machine tools and production equipment, it’s essential they operate efficiently with the right materials and components always to hand.’ 2
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