Using Heat Treatment to Combine Foundry Processes

Traditional production processes for aluminum castings are costly and energy intensive. The flow of many casting operations consists of several independent steps, carried out without any connection to previous process steps. Usually, castings are cooled intensively to make it easier to carry out subsequent processes, e.g. removal of feeder and gating systems and flash, mechanical de-coring, and manual cleaning. In many cases the castings are subsequently heat-treated.