Automation of Sand

Casting Process by
Mold Positioning

School of Mechanical and

Manufacturing Engineering
(SMME), NUST Islamabad

Dr. Shahid Ikramullah Butt

Umar Mushtaq

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 TABLE OF CONTENTS
Table of contents .............................................................................................................. i
List of Figures ................................................................................................................... i

1 Introduction……………………………………………………………………………………...Page 1
1.1 Background……………………………………………………………………………………Page 1
2 Design of automated conveyor system……………………………………………………….Page 2
2.1 Small Scale Prototype model………………………………………………………………..Page 3
3 Experimental Results…………………………………………………………………………...Page 4
4. Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………………Page 6
References…………………………………………………………………………………………Page 7

List of Figures
Figure 1. System Model for automated sand casting………………………………………….Page 2
Figure 2. Fabricated Mechanical Model………………………………………………………...Page 3
Figure 3. Mold and Pallet on Mechanical Model……………………………………………….Page 3
Figure 4. Electronics Hardware…………………………………………………………………..Page 4
Figure 5. System Architecture……………………………………………………………….......Page 4
Figure 6. System flow of information…………………………………………………………….Page 5

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 1. Introduction

In today’s world automation is no more a fancy setup in the industry; it has become a necessity
for the industries to compete in the market. This project has been done to introduce automation
in an induction furnace based sand casting setup. Primarily there are two types of automation
that can be done, firstly is to automate the pouring of molten metal into the casting molds and
second is develop an automated system in which the casting molds automatically align
themselves in front of the induction furnace, such that the center of sprue comes directly
beneath the fixed pouring point of induction furnace. Much work has been done on automatic
pouring system but the concept of automatic mold alignment is relatively new, therefore this has
been taken up as the core objective of this project. Firstly a complete to the scale model in Pro-
Engineer has been made of the automated system which primarily consist of conveyors and
other mechanisms which fulfill our objective; moreover the same model has been animated to
show the automated casting process. The project has been initiated by Manufacturing
Resource Centre (MRC) – SMME, therefore the model is designed keeping in mind the
requirements of MRC, the actual equipment present there, the actual dimension of the space
available and the dimensions of the equipment already present there. After making the
conceptual model and its simulation, the concept is then verified by making a small scale
prototype model and along with it a complete algorithm has also been made. The results of this
is that I have achieved an automated small scale model which fully depicts the full scale model
designed earlier.

1.1 Background

The casting process is used for forming metals into the desired shapes and sizes. It involves
pouring boiling hot metal from a ladle into a mold by the workers. Handling molten metals at
such a high temperature is an extremely delicate task and requires a lot of skill. Accidents
occurring during the casting process can result in severe injuries or even death of the skilled
workers. Therefore, a lot of research has been done to introduce automation in the casting
process to improve the working environment. Some of the efforts in this area can be seen in (W.
Lindsay, 1983; K.Terashima, 1998; E.Neuman and D.Trauzeddel, 2002).

The purpose of this project is to introduce a new scheme of automation in the sand casting
process, by using vision based technology for mold positioning. Automation has been achieved
by developing an original system in which casting molds of different sizes, having different

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pouring cup location and radius, position themselves in front of the induction furnace such that
the center of pouring cup comes directly beneath the pouring point of furnace. The process
includes a vision based system, in which a single camera takes the image of the casting mold,
Harris Corner Detector Technique is used for detecting a reference point on the pallet (on which
the mold is placed), then the pouring cup center is found using Hough Transform, and the data
is transferred to the controller which controls the alignment mechanism of the mold. The
practical implementation of this new concept in sand casting automation has led to the
conclusion that molds of different sizes, having different pouring cup location and radius and
having different position and orientation on the conveyor belt can be easily casted on the same
assembly line by this automatic mold positioning system without any human intervention. The
system introduced here has been specifically designed for a sand casting setup, thus industries
using the sand casting process with fixed pouring point can automate and benefit from the
adaption of this system in their process. The research and implementation done on the
automation of sand casting process up till now is on the automation of the molten metal pouring,
the casting molds on assembly line of such systems are all of the same size, location and have
same radius and location of pouring cup on the mold, the novel factor in the system presented
here is that it can accept mold of having variable geometry, variable position and variable
pouring cup location and radius, without any human intervention.

2. Design of automated conveyor system

Firstly a complete system design (Figure 1) for the sand casting automation was made in Pro-
Engineer. The model is to the scale and is designed according to an induction furnace setup
present in a manufacturing facility.

Figure 3. System Model for automated sand casting

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After successful model design an animation of the same is also made to visualize the concept of
automation by mold positioning. The process starts by a mold preparation area, where casting
molds are prepared; these are then transferred via a conveyor. During this first conveyor a camera
takes the snapshot of the mold and processes it to find the location of pouring cup center. After
first conveyor, the second conveyor comes which can also move towards and back to the
induction furnace. This conveyor is responsible for the actual mold positioning, a small scale
model of it is also made to verify the concept and test the algorithm. After mold positioning and
metal pouring this second conveyor moves the mold to the last conveyor which takes to mold to
the cooling area.

2.1 Small Scale Prototype model

As explained above the conveyor in the middle is the main part of the system which is responsible
to carry the mold towards the induction furnace and position it accordingly, the rest two are just
transport conveyors, thus the small scale model (Figure 2) is made for it. The model consist of
two lead screw mechanisms which give the mold place on top a two-degree of freedom
positioning. The lead screws are run by DC-gear motors with encoder. Encoder provides pulses
proportional to the rotation of lead screw and hence the linear distance traveled, hence they are
used as a feedback for the microcontroller on the distance traveled by the mold. As this is a small
scale model, it is not possible to add an induction furnace to it, hence a fixed point is made with
help of a rod which represent the pouring point of the induction furnace, and the molds thus have
to position themselves such that the pouring cup center comes directly beneath this pouring point.

Figure 4. Fabricated Mechanical Model Figure 3. Mold and Pallet on Mechanical Model

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After successful fabrication of the mechanical model the electronics hardware to run it is required,
the main requirements of the hardware are
 Microcontroller module
 Two Motor Control modules
 Module to allow communication between Vision System and Microcontroller
The System consist of two portions, one is the vision system which is run on a computer, while
the other is the microcontroller based hardware, thus for successful running of the system there
has to be communication link between these two portions, which is achieved by Serial
communication. The output of the vision system is one of the inputs to the microcontroller
hardware. The final fabricated circuit having all the required modules and being wired up to the
mechanical model is shown in Figure 4.

Figure 4. Electronics Hardware Figure 5. System Architecture

3. Experimental Results
All the components of the prototype; mechanical model, electronics hardware and Vision System
were interfaced together as one system. The system was then fine-tuned by adjusting several
parameters of the vision system and the microcontroller algorithm, to produce an automated mold
positioning system. It is worth mentioning the flow of information in the entire system; Figure 6
not only shows the flow of information but also shows all the modules and functions happening in
the system in the correct sequence. The boxes in yellow show the functions executed in the Vision
system by Matlab and in the green boxes are those executed by the microcontroller. After the
start command is giving in Matlab till the actual physical mold positioning the process is fully
automated without any human intervention.

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 Figure 6. System flow of information

The system developed here is unique and better than other sand casting automations setups as
it can accommodate the following variations in the molds without any human interventions or
hardware changes to mechanism.
 Different mold position on the pallet
 Different mold orientation on the pallet
 Molds of different sizes
 Molds with different pouring cup positions.
 Molds with different pouring cup radius.
In a sand casting setup where wide variety of parts are made on the same assembly line, it
requires the molds to be of different sizes, pouring cup location or radius to vary, thus this system
comes into play in such situations, and it autonomously handles the variations in the molds.
Moreover the worker who is preparing the molds and putting them on the conveyor belt does not
have to think or put any effort on the placement of the molds, the system will accept molds in any
orientation or position on the pallet.

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 4. Conclusion
In existing sand casting automation research and implementation has been done on the precise
pouring of the molten metal, but the molds on the conveyor line are all of the same size, having
same pouring cup location and radius, thus if molds have to be casted which are different, the
entire production line has to be stopped, and after physical adjustment to the pouring mechanism
the system is started. This system presented here does not require any sort of production stopping
or manual adjustment once it is started; it will keep the casting process running regardless of the
variations in the geometry and position of the casting mold.
In this research project first a complete model of the system is given by which this new scheme
of automation can be implemented in the sand casting industry. Then as a proof of that concept,
to test the mechanical feasibility, and test and verify the algorithms developed a small scale
prototype model is made on which successful demonstration is given on automatic mold
positioning to be used in a complete sand casting system model designed earlier. The automatic
mold positioning prototype has proved to be a success due to its precise and reliable mold
positioning capability.
The system presented here can be coupled with already present automatic metal pouring systems
in the industry, thus giving a fully automatic sand casting system. The introduction of mold
positioning system presented here will increase the flexibility, and mold handling capability of
existing automated sand casting setups, thus allowing different parts to be casted on the same
conveyor line without any human intervention or process stopping. The system presented here is
not limited just to a sand casting process, other industries requiring an autonomous positioning
system for their parts/items on a conveyor system can also benefit from this.

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 References

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