Quality Assurance for Foundries

In modern manufacturing, ensuring precision and quality is essential for success. Therefore, castings must fulfil certain quality criteria. A key strategy to facilitate the creation of innovative designs is the reverse engineering of castings and entire pattern setups with 3D scan data.
This process can be enhanced by a central database that provides real-time visualization and quality reporting, making complex data more accessible and actionable. Additionally, by analyzing data from past projects, organizations can prevent errors and optimize their processes, ultimately driving greater efficiency and product excellence.
The measuring data of molds and cores enable a virtual assembly analysis of mold halves and cores. This serves for the inspection of parting surfaces regarding offset, fitting and form fit of mold halves and core clearance.

Defects such as blowholes, cracks, or inclusions can significantly impact the functionality and lifespan of parts. To ensure that castings meet the highest safety standards, internal defects should be checked in early stages.

CT technology enables the generation of precise, traceable 3D volumetric data, allowing for automated and even AI-driven defect detection. This non-destructive inspection method not only improves the reliability of identifying defects but also optimizes the inspection workflow. Moreover, 2D X-ray systems provide swift detection of defects, even in demanding environments, thereby reinforcing the effectiveness and efficiency of production processes.

Thanks to microstructural analysis, foundries can evaluate grain sizes, graphite precipitates, distributions, and non-metallic inclusions, enhancing the understanding of material properties and performance. With industrial microscopy solutions raw castings can this way be also checked for their grain size and shape, and layer thickness.

Optical measurement techniques enable full-field inspection and digitalization of the shape and dimensions of castings, facilitating thorough evaluations during first article inspections and throughout series production.

With its back projection function, the ATOS sensor projects features such as isolines and punch marks straight from the software onto the real part. As a result, the conventional marking of heavy cast blanks is no longer needed. Additionally, efficient part alignment for CNC machining can be achieved.

Furthermore, optical metrology is used for shape and dimension control of patterns, core boxes, molds and cores to improve part quality and cost.

Once the part is finished, it is essential to assess its consistency and precision using coordinate measuring machines (CMMs). For critical dimensions, measurements can be performed concurrently with production, allowing for quality checks at the last step.

CMMs are also used in the manufacturing, maintenance and repair of molds and cores to ensure and improve their quality and lifetime.