A PROJECT REPORT ON

SUMMER VOCATIONAL
TRAINING IN
BHILAI TOPIC
STEEL PLANT
FOUNDRY AND PATTERN
SHOP

PREPARED BY:
RITU LAHRE
METALLURGY
5TH SEMESTER
3203810036
 Foundry & Pattern shop is an important
Engineering Shop.

 Set up to meet the requirement of various

ferrous and non-ferrous castings and cast
blanks.

 It comprises two major parts, the Pattern Shop

and the Foundry Shop.
THE PATTERN SHOP
 The pattern shop is designed to produce patterns for
foundry needs.
 The annual output is rated at 220 Cu. Meters.
 It is equipped with modern set of working machine tools.
 Handling of heavy patterns at the shop and storage is
carried out by overhead travelling crane operated from
floor level.
 The patterns are painted according to a code, ticked,
labeled and stored, to enable the patterns to be issued
to foundry as and when required, according to a well-
laid out procedure.
 The pattern storage room is protected against any fire
hazards.
FOUNDRY SHOP
 The foundry shop is laid out in five bays, each of
length 270 meters. Various types of castings and
their usage is as follows:
1. Iron Castings : ( Capacity 79000 T/year)
I. Spare parts for machines / equipments.
II. Ingot moulds.
III. Bottom Stools.
2. Steel Castings : ( Capacity 6500 T/ year)
I. Spare parts for machines / equipments.
II. Twin hearth-charging boxes.
III. Skull cracker balls.
IV. Spares for Mould bogie.
 V. Ladle covers for SMS, Lip ring for CCS.
VI. Pig casting moulds.
VII. Alloy steel Ingots.

3. Non - Ferrous Castings : ( Capacity 515 T/

Year)
I. Bushings, slide blocks for machines/ equipments.
II. Hollow shaft for SMS.
III. Al. Cubes & Al. Shots for SMS-I & SMS-II.
MAIN SECTIONS OF FOUNDRY
SHOP
 Charging and Moulding Material Store:
o The charging and moulding material storage is
designed to hold 15 days supply of all raw
material used in foundry.
o The storage bay is served by overhead
travelling cranes with removable magnets.
o With the help of electric grabs, all the raw
materials are stored in bins & bunkers.
 Sand Preparation Section
o Here, preparation of moulding sands and core
sand mixture for all types of castings is done.
o The raw silica sand is received from Sambalpur
and Allahabad.
o Quartzite sand is supplied by Crushing Plant.
o The new sand, if wet, is dried in a rotary dryer
in which sand is heated to 200-250°C.
o The dried sand is fed in the feeding hoppers,
over the sand mixers of 20 cm3/hr capacity
o In sand mixer, various moulding materials like
fire clay, bentonite, molasses, saw dust etc. are
added and mixed.

o The sand so prepared is distributed by the

system of conveyor belts throughout the cast-
iron, steel and core section.

o 130 T of mixed sand is produced by sand

mixers for preparing different types of sand
mixtures for core section (about 5 T per day).
 Iron Foundry
 The Iron foundry can be divided in to the following
sub-sections.
I. Cast Iron section.
II. Mixer section
III. Moulding section
IV. Ingot Moulds
V. Mould drying chambers.
 The estimated annual requirement of the metal is
about 1,00,000 tons and the daily requirements is
270 tons.
 The moulding section prepares moulds for all types
of castings required under the schedule or special
work requiring upto 30 tons liquid metal.
The Ingot Mould section produces the Ingot
Moulds required by the plant.
Each Ingot Mould weights 8.8. T or 9.3 T and
the daily production of Ingot Moulds are 17 nos.
on average.
Ingot Moulds are rammed on two 30 tones
jolting machines in the Ingot Mould section.
Top box is prepared for using at top of Ingot
Mould for pouring.
The mould drying chambers are used for drying
the moulds in the chamber type drying ovens at
the temperature of 300-350°C.
 There are 6 drying ovens. The 4 drying ovens
are of 130m3 capacity and the other 2 of 60 m3
capacity for drying small castings.

 These ovens have been provided with an

arrangement for the re-circulation of the
products of combustion.

 Coke oven gas is used for heating purpose.

 Steel Foundry

This section is located in line with the Iron

casting section.

It is divided into the following sub-sections:

○ Steel Melting Section
○ Moulding Section
 Non - Ferrous foundry

The Non-ferrous foundry is meant to produce

liners, bearings, slide blocks, bushes and other
small castings of different types from brass and
bronze.
Aluminum Shots and Cubes section consists of
3 Al.
Melting and pouring units and 3 melting
crucibles for Al. Cube making.
 Fettling section

This section is equipped with the following

equipment:
○ Knock-Out Machine
○ Hydro cleaning chambers : 2 nos
○ Milling Machines : 2 nos.

 Cranes

There are in all 24 E.O.T cranes, including the

crane in the new bay (towards SMS stripper
yard)
CASTING
 Casting is a manufacturing process by which
a liquid material is usually poured into
a mold, which contains a hollow cavity of the
desired shape, and then allowed to solidify.
 The solidified part is also known as a
casting, which is ejected or broken out of the
mold to complete the process.
 Casting is most often used for making
complex shapes that would be otherwise
difficult or uneconomical to make by other
methods.
 There are various kinds of casting process
that come under the foundry:
Ingot casting
Continuous casting
Investment casting
Die casting
Centrifugal casting
Permanent mold casting
Squeeze casting
Semi metal casting
Counter gravity Low pressure casting
INVESTMENT CASTING
 Investment casting is an industrial process
based on and also called lost-wax castings,
one of the oldest known metal-forming
techniques.

 The process is generally used for small

castings, but has been used to produce
complete aircraft door frames, steels castings
of up to 300 kg and aluminium castings of up
to 30 kg.
 It is generally more expensive per unit than die
casting or sand casting, but has lower
equipment costs.

 It can produce complicated shapes that would

be difficult or impossible with die casting, yet
like that process, it requires little surface
finishing and only minor machining.
The compositions of present-day pattern waxes
(unfilled) typically fall into the ranges given below:
PROCESS
Produce a master pattern
Mould making
Produce the wax patterns
Assemble the wax patterns
Investment
Dewax
Burnout & preheating
Pouring
Removal
DETAILS
 Investment casting is used with almost any
castable metal, however aluminium alloys,
copper alloys, and steel are the most common.
 In industrial usage the size limits are 3 g to
about 5 kg.
 The cross-sectional limits are 0.6 mm to 75 mm.
 Typical tolerances are 0.1 mm for the first 25 mm
and 0.02 mm for the each additional centimeter.
 A standard surface finish is 1.3–4 micrometres.
 The advantages of investment casting
are:
Excellent surface finish
High dimensional accuracy
Extremely intricate parts are castable
Almost any metal can be cast
No flash or parting lines
 The main DISADVANTAGE is the overall cost.
Some of the reasons for the high cost include
specialized equipment, costly refractories and
binders, many operations to make a mould, a
lot of labor is needed and occasional minute
defects.
 However, the cost is still less than producing
the same part by machining from bar stock; for
example, gun manufacturing has moved to
investment casting to lower costs of
producing pistons.
APPLICATION
 Investment casting is used in the aerospace
and power operations industries to produce
turbine blades with complex shapes or
cooling systems.
 Investment casting is also widely used by
firearms manufacturers to fabricate firearm
receivers, triggers, hammers, and other
precision parts at low cost.
 Other industries that use standard
investment-cast parts include military,
medical, commercial and automotive.