Large burnout, flooring ect... help

Hi, Guest anrchy,

Sorry I haven't got the first idea of anything to help - way out of my field - but it's good to hear from you.

If you register, you can get an e-mail notification that there is a reply. This saves a lot of hassle coming back to check for replies, and sometimes comes up with something useful long after you've forgotten what, or that, you asked.

Regards, John

Hello Milo,

clever and sensible ideas here. Ga to you Sir...........

Take care........................

thanks. I thought the mirror idea particularly appropriate.

milo

Hello Milo,

yes I also thought the mirror was a great idea.

Really, in this situation, where there is considerable danger, it has to be treated almost like a radio-active situation. And all monitoring should be nowhere near enough to get damaged. A camera can be a hundred metres away and still fucus on the furnace?

Take care..................

unfortunately, the design of the furnace doesn't allow me to do much. And I need something that is going to be cheap and more effective. While still utilizing what we already have. I cant move the camera, I can't extend the viewing tube eaither (would be in the way while changing electrodes) anything costing my company a good chunk of cash won't even be considered. they are cheap like that. Plus economy and boeing going on strike recently has effected us greatly with our budget. they laid off quite a few people.

-anrchy

Milo, thank you for your help, let me be more specific with my questions.

1) WHy do you put molds directly on floor firebrick?

Reason being is, these are the materials that are given to us. I actually ask the same question hence this is why I am trying to find a more efficient method of flooring for the burnouts that are given to us to use. Is there a large company that supplies alternate flooring or something fabricated like your suggestion. Keep in mind it has to be able to handle temperatures of 2000 degree's 24 hours a day 7 days a week 365 days a year without warping so much that it wouldn't be cost effective. Also our 2 large burnouts could easily hold 2 large SUV's and our 4 medium ones could hold a full sized car.

2) If forklift driver isn't careful. Careful is not a process. Train drivers, give better equipment, or get replace drivers. Lack of care is unprofessional.

Find me a company where you aren't going to find people acting in an unprofessional way. Besides after being heated up to 2000 degree's then dropped to a lower temp then down to 100 degrees then back up to 2000 again tends to make things become more brittle. Especially after have several hundred pounds placed on top then removed then repeated 50 times or so a week. It really is hard to never break this stuff.

And with the pot adds I need some kind of rack so that people don't have to bend over to sort through them then pick them up. We only use 1 pot add per melt. But it would be nice to be able to place this think on a flatbed with a forklift to transport it to our ingot fabrication dept. to be filled up again. was hoping a company made something like this, like a cd storage rack or something?

As to reply about the melt/pour camera's. Our furnace's already have camera's setup. And it is a direct shot/view angle, to modify this would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. I am looking for a cheaper idea to make some kind of screen. The splash that would hit the screen would be much like that of molten slag if your cutting titanium with a torch. I'm not sure if they make some kind of tungsten screens, but it would need to be a type of metal that titanium doesn't stick well to and can handle higher amounts of heat then regular steel screen (too thin)

Thank you for all your input.

-anrchy

We had a 2 in steel plate to pour on and for the fork lift to operate on. The dips the fork lift hits after picking up the molds can cause problems in the mold.

mirror idea is a good way to at least try and solve the camera lens problem.

I have just joined this discussion group and appreciate the input that is sent in.

inventive solutions

It doesn't do any good, but a GA from me too. I particularly like the mirror trick

Bill

Thanks Sciesis2.

feedback of any kind is valuable on this forum as you know as a contributor yourself.

Thanks!

milo

I am an induction furnace operator doing Titanium castings for a large company. i was hoping someone could help me out with at least one of my issues.

OPERATOR.......this guy should be a process engineer because he ask smart questions and probably listens to the answers. The next test is to see if he gives MILO credit.

how about an air curtain in front of the camera lens, we deal in compressed air and specialist applications such as your kind regards richard

www.rscompressors.co.uk

I'm not sure exactly what an air curtain is, but from what I can tell I don't think something like that would work. maybe explain more? thanks.

-anrchy

a spray curtain would work in 2 ways, compressed air blasting infront at a distance from the lens, this will blow particles away from the lens also compressed air will cool particles rapidly, I hope this is of some use

The foundry that I had worked in used two different approaches to the camera's. One was to put a Stainless Steel screen in front of a half inch Pyrex glass then the camera (infrared sensor and camera), and the other was a half inch thick Pyrex glass with no screen (video camera). The glass is a disposable item.

The hearth brick for your furnace: We made ours which was a mixture of SS needles and refractory cast into molds for the size that we needed. These type of blocks can take a beating. We also made them for the sized that we needed for our induction furnace frames.

Where are you located?

I'm in oregon. what type of metal casting did you use with the stainless screen? Cause thats what I was thinking of trying. But I wasn't sure if the titanium splatter would destroy the screen per melt. And I was hoping to get it to last a little longer than that. The sight glass we use is 1/2 inch thick as well and we don't get shipments of it for our mid sized casting furnace very often so it leaves me not being able to see how my bar is arcing and how it is melting. Which is quite important if the melted Ti starts to swirl. if they make screen that is more heat resistant, and something that Ti doesn't stick to very well, that would be perfect. But i wasn't sure if any other foundry's used this method.

See the problem with the burnout flooring is that the brick we use is really cheap. And it transfers heat well. But we use an I beam design with hearth plates laying on top of that, which isn't a very strong design. But we can't block the jets. And the steel grates we place the molds onto are extremely heavy, as are the molds. Plus the whole floor has to be flat without any gaps (except along the outside edges) because certain molds we have don't use and grates. I can't really say much about some of this stuff cause it is privileged information, and i could get fired for leaking out certain methods of our process.

-anrchy

The screen we used was 316ss. I haven't looked to see if inconel screen is available in a small mesh pattern.

I understand the information problem. We cast many varities off SS, inconel and aircraft parts, but very little of titanium. The racks that we use measure about 4ft by 6ft. and ride on rails of inconel. But these ovens are sometimes loaded and unloaded by forklift. Down time on the ovens was a bigger concern than the cost of hearth brick, as broken hearth brick = downtime.

You can email me privitely if you wish.