Two shakeout screens fabricated from impact- and abrasive-resistant steel, for longer service life.

Recycling foundry sand provides financial, environmental and economic benefits, but the stress endured by vibrating shakeout screens may cause problems that minimize the financial savings. In the design of the screens, mild steel grades may not provide the wear resistance required to perform the continuous, high-impact work of screen sand. In once instance detailed by IMS U.K., its customer used mild-steel screens for a shakeout system, which lasted only two weeks before needing repair. Their full working life was just two months.

The solution offered by IMS U.K. involves two sets of screens fabricated from its Creusabro 4800 wear-resistant steel.

A set of top screens takes the impact of each 900-lb sand mold dropping onto them, to initially break the sand into pieces. Then, the vibratory action reduces the sand chunks and leaves the more abrasive work of breaking down and screening the sand to the second set of screens.

As explained by IMS Business Development Manager Nick Taylor said: “Creusabro 4800 … combines extreme resistance to abrasion with a high level of toughness and has the ability to work continuously at higher temperatures than standard abrasion steels.”

For the same customer, the new bottom screens were in service for six months before requiring any maintenance, and the top screens were still in place and working after nearly nine months.