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Spent a full shift trying to figure out why our new green sand was acting like soup | Foundry Workers - Librear

Spent a full shift trying to figure out why our new green sand was acting like soup

Honestly, we got a fresh batch in from the supplier and it just would not hold a mold, kept slumping over like wet cement. Tbh, it took us 6 hours and three different binder tests before we realized the new guy had been adding way too much water to the muller. Anyone else ever have a simple fix take a whole day to spot?

3 comments

3 Comments

emma_hayes805mo ago

My buddy in the foundry had a similar thing happen with bentonite clay once. The whole crew was chasing their tails for hours on a bad mix. Turned out the scale was just zeroed wrong the whole time, adding like double the clay. Sometimes the answer is right in front of you, just hiding in plain sight.

lucas633mo ago

My buddy at a shop near Detroit had a similar headache with their nobake line. They spent a whole Saturday fighting a gummy strip of sand that wouldn't set right, checking every ratio and the mixer calibration. Turned out one of the hoses from the catalyst tank had a tiny crack, letting air in and messing with the flow. @emma_hayes80 is right, it's almost always some stupid little thing like a loose dial that makes you want to chuck your hard hat.

robin6585mo ago

Wasn't there a story like this with a bad pallet of resin? My friend's shop had this core shooter that just kept making weak cores that fell apart. They checked the machine pressure, the sand blend, everything. Took them a full day, and a call to the supplier, to find out the whole pallet had been stored next to a heater and was basically cooked before it even got to them. Reminds me of what @emma_hayes80 said about the scale being off, how the problem is often something dumb you'd never think to check twice. Makes you want to kick a barrel sometimes.