Installations: Innovative Casting Technologies - Dualtech Foundry

Innovative Casting Technologies - Dualtech Foundry

In 2008 a devastating fire destroyed Dualtech's foundry. Palmer was called to replace damaged equipment — to get them quickly up-and-running. Since that time, the Dualtech Foundry had expanded several times from a conventional loop to a carousel no-bake molding system.

In 2018, they took the bold step to become one of the first foundries in the country to install thePalmer flip molder – the industry’s most advanced automated no-bake system.
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Installation of the Palmer Flip Molding Machine

OVERVIEW
Innovative Casting Technologies (ICT) from its inception has always been a high-end prototype facility for some of our nation’s largest truck and heavy equipment manufacturers. Over the past fifteen years to meet production increases, this foundry expanded from a conveyor-loop based molding system to a carousel rollover-based molding system. Due to ICT’s continued expansion into complex / low production runs meant that they needed a different kind of molding system that would greatly increase the number of molds per hour within their current limited floor space.

SOLUTION
Palmer Manufacturing & Supply has been ICT’s No-Bake equipment partner for more than a decade. With an eye on both the production requirements and physical constraints, they recommended their recent introduction of the Flip Molding Machine (FMM). The FMM is a multi-platen machine where the box is filled, compacted, and struck off at one station, indexed, and then inverted to extract the mold at another station with a simple lift device (instead of a rollover).

Eliminating a rollover presented ICT with many very attractive advantages. While greatly reduced capital costs for the system is typically the most obvious advantage; the productivity increases were even more remarkable due to the elimination of a rollover’s cycle time of 2 minutes. Additionally, a rollover requires quite a bit of floor space and this too was reduced with the FMM.

RESULTS of FMM (44x4418/18)

• Mold half cycle time of 47 seconds
• Mold production rate of 37 complete molds per hour with 30-40 pattern changes per shift
• Smaller molds are run with depths as shallow as 4"
• Molds are drawn with a lift device – the depth of mold half has no appreciable effect on the production rate since there is no rollover
• Mold box movement and draw function are all 100% automatic; the only staffing requirements consist of a mixer operator and utility person to help set sleeves and assist the mixer operator in striking off
• Coating, coring, closing – are all accomplished in the normal manner
• Pattern mounting system is fast enough to maintain the 37 molds per hour rate on a daily basis

"The combination of reduced costs, increased productivity, reduced floor space requirements, and reduced staffing levels has made the Palmer Flip Molding Machine a very profitable addition to our foundry," said Jack Laugle, President, Innovative Casting Technologies.