Studies of A356 Aluminum Alloy for Sand Mould Casting Gating System

The present study focus on tackling the casting defect of aluminium A356 alloy, this alloys have very good casting and machining characteristics, which dominantly affects the part produced by identifying the major defects caused by existing gating system. The major objective of this study is to minimize casting defect of spare part manufactured in textile Share Company by using Pro CAST software. This study is conducted in Bahirdar textile foundry workshop, the casting parameters which highly contributes to the soundness casting are identified with basic metallurgical and foundry properties of aluminium A356 alloy. The development of gating system for aluminium alloy is done by following American foundry society standard for getting reliable results. The optimization of Ingate and riser of gating system is carried out by Taguchi Method. The analysis result reports the shrinkage (macro) porosities and hot spot defects under existing gating system practised in the factory. After identifying the porosity defect; results of analysis process are iterated to get the optimum results, porosity found to be minimized for various gating system parameters. From simulation result; it is found that the best suited gating system parameter for aluminium A356 alloy sand casting is tapered sprue in decreasing initiation of defect from scratch. Finally, it is recommended that the company should implement the optimized processes parameters in addition to taking remedial action on the influential factors of the casting process.