Driving down part turnaround time whereas enhancing quality and reducing waste is being achieved at Weir Minerals Africa’s exciting new Replicast Plant in Isando, Gauteng.
Umar Smith, plant manager at Weir Minerals Africa’s Isando facility, highlights that the progressive improvement allows the company to produce more parts at a time – and extra rapidly. This will help in assembly rising customer demand, whereas also reducing rework and wastage.
“As part of our Project Vuka, this new plant allows us to forged multiple small elements per batch somewhat than simply one by one,” says Smith. “We can even scale back our knock-out times from days to only a couple of hours.”
The state-of-the-art amenities allow Weir Minerals Africa to forged high chrome components weighing as a lot as 250 kg. There are เกจวัดแรงดันเชื้อเพลิง to the brand new course of, he explains, which uses polystyrene to create moulds. The first phase 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 normal moulding line – where 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 entails a vacuum bin, from which all of the air is removed to compress the sand.
“The absence of resin and catalyst – as nicely as having no clamping course of – results in much less scrap being produced, and therefore brings operational savings,” he says. “The quality of castings is also raised, with a greater surface end and fewer defects.”
He notes that the geometrical stability of components is improved, as there might be much less fettling of the finished product thereby reducing dimensional variation between the identical elements. This in turn contributes to the reliability of the equipment utilizing those parts. He says the foundry may also realise significant environmental benefits because of utilizing no chemical substances within the sand.
“This new plant aligns nicely with our company sustainability objectives, guaranteeing that our processes aren’t solely compliant but continuously scale back our environmental impact,” says Smith. “Our new moulding systems be sure that fewer gases are emitted in the course of the casting process, and there are zero emissions of harmful substances similar to benzene.”
The new know-how can also be leading to less frequent disposal of silica sand, and the sand itself is more environmentally pleasant as it incorporates no resin or acid.
“A remarkable aspect of developing this new plant was the fact that it was accomplished with our local skills and largely during 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 finances.”
The plant contains more than 16,000 individual components, and makes use of over 1,900 m of cabling, 300 m of water piping and 55 tons of steel.
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