Driving down part turnaround time while improving high 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 innovative improvement enables the corporate to supply extra components at a time – and more rapidly. This will help in assembly rising buyer demand, while also decreasing rework and wastage.
“As part of our Project Vuka, this new plant permits us to solid a quantity of small parts per batch rather than just separately,” says Smith. “We also can scale back our knock-out occasions from days to simply a couple of hours.”
The state-of-the-art facilities enable Weir Minerals Africa to solid high chrome components weighing up to 250 kg. There are two phases to the brand new process, he explains, which uses polystyrene to create moulds. The first part is the polystyrene moulding process, which happens after the polystyrene beads have been expanded. The second part is where the ramming, pouring and demoulding takes place.
In contrast 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. เกจวัดแรงดันแก๊สหุงต้ม includes a vacuum bin, from which all the air is eliminated to compress the sand.
“The absence of resin and catalyst – in addition to having no clamping course of – leads to less scrap being produced, and therefore brings operational financial savings,” he says. “The high quality of castings can be raised, with a better floor end and fewer defects.”
He notes that the geometrical stability of elements is improved, as there’s much less fettling of the completed product thereby lowering dimensional variation between the identical elements. This in turn contributes to the reliability of the equipment using these elements. He says the foundry will also realise important environmental advantages as a result of using no chemical substances within the sand.
“This new plant aligns nicely with our company sustainability objectives, making certain that our processes aren’t solely compliant however repeatedly cut back our environmental influence,” says Smith. “Our new moulding systems be sure that fewer gases are emitted through the casting course of, and there are zero emissions of harmful substances similar to benzene.”
The new know-how can be resulting in less frequent disposal of silica sand, and the sand itself is extra environmentally friendly because it accommodates no resin or acid.
“A exceptional side of creating this new plant was the fact that it was carried out with our native expertise and largely through the COVID-19 lockdowns,” he says. “Despite เกจ์อาร์กอนsumo of this expertise, and the logistical challenges created by the pandemic, it was successfully applied 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 fifty five tons of steel.
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