Core shop upgrade with automatic coating control on multiple core shooters

The interview

Fonderie De Riccardins is a family-owned cast iron foundry that operates successfully for over fifty years in the production of cast iron castings for mechanical applications, with emphasis on products with high technical content. Alessia De Riccardis is the Quality Manager of the foundry and this article is related to their experience with the project of the upgrade of the core shop.

• After your experience with ITACA products, finally also an investment in ARENA equipment, isn’t it?

“Our collaboration with Proservice began more than 10 years ago, when we installed your ITACA X metallurgical control system from the melting department up to pouring line, as well as the ITACA Stream and ITACA Vision inoculation control systems. It was therefore natural to upgrade our core shop too.”

• Why have you decided to invest in the core shop?

“Fonderie De Riccardis is located in the region of Puglia, in the South of Italy and this area is far from the other foundries in which many external core shops supply cores to the other Italian foundries. In addition, our own production of cores inside the foundry helps us in controlling deeply the whole process. Fonderie De Riccardis has already invested in the past in the core shop and we have several core shooters from 5 Lt to a new 100 LT core shooter too”

• What about the coating process?

“Like practically all the main foundries, we used to make batch sample with Baumè stick (manual notes on paper) and to dip the cores in self-produced dip tank or supplied by companies that were not experts in this part of the process and we were suffering all problems related to those issues. End of 2021, we have installed 4 xALL-in-ONE, each one connected to a pipeline feeding automatically the dense coating from the container, and they are capable to control and prepare the coating 100% without any operator involved“.

• Are the units integrated with your ERP and data saving system?

“The whole investment complies the demands of Industry 4.0 and one of the milestones is definitively the interaction with existing ERP or software in use in the foundry. So it is possible to import the recipe of the coating and the type of cores. Moreover every ALL-in-ONE exports database in a specific folder. In our quality control process, sometime we have used the database to check the parameters related to a specific batch of castings.”

• Can you tell me more about maintenance?

“ALL-in-ONE and Vibro-filter require rarely maintenance and inspections and we have the possibility to use the Vibro-filter even during the production removing the sand immediately. It had a positive impact on the casting quality but also on the running costs of the sore shop as it is not necessary anymore to clean and empty all the dip tanks. In fact this operation now is just done during summer shut-down.”

• If you should summarize in 3 words the investment on ARENA Equipment?

“Reliability, consistency, traceability”