Virtual Tooling Development and Tooling Cost Estimation for Sand Casting

Abstract

Casting is a major manufacturing process. It requires an understanding of a wide range of geometrical, material and process parameters. For producing cost effective casting, in today's market of intense competition, where the need of the hour is to develop quality products at low cost and short lead time, innovative and cost effective designs are the means to success. Early cost estimation, necessary for design-to-cost philosophy, serves as a decision making tool for the designer when a choice is to be made from a range of alternatives. In sand casting process the tooling's (patterns and core boxes) design is very important and complex job. Now today there is software available to make patterns and core box design. In many casting industries to make pattern design with respect to part is difficult, and in industry pattern design are commonly made by experience of pattern maker. If part is complex it becomes more difficult to design the pattern and their core boxes. Also pattern cost estimation is very complex job, because there is not much tools available to estimate the exact pattern cost for the part, and in most of the industry pattern costs are estimated by experience of pattern maker, and this cost may vary from industry to industry and person to person. Also experienced based cost is suitable only for simple patterns, as pattern complexity increases it becomes more difficult to determine the pattern cost. In this work we propose virtual tooling development and cost estimation methodology that involves parting design and method design to arrive to one of the possible pattern design and geometrical parameter as volume, volume ratio, radius of sphere, area ratio, surface area, minimum thickness, thickness ratio, depth of cut, depth ratio, are calculated from the pattern design. This is performed on fifty cast parts, for pattern cost estimation.

Cite this Article

Amit Bhumarker, Sachin Gayakwad. Virtual Tooling Development and Tooling Cost Estimation for Sand Casting. Trends in Mechanical Engineering & Technology. 2017; 7(3): 59–66p.