A foundry’s post-shakeout sand and casting temperatures plunged after upgrading its cooling drum to a DISACOOL design. DISA modified the foundry’s cooling drum as part of an Equipment Modernisation Programme (EMP).
The foundry’s castings were previously far too hot as they left the cooling drum – around 250°C. The customer wanted the final casting temperature to be between 70 to 90°C to avoid damaging castings during shot blasting, maximise the shot-blasting machine’s wear parts service life and reduce blast media consumption.
The sand discharge temperature from the drum was also too high at around 160°C with a 0.3-0.5% moisture content. The foundry needed cooler, wetter sand that it could directly recycle back to the sand plant without affecting sand quality.
“DISACOOL is a very effective and energy-efficient way to cool castings and sand that needs very little operator supervision or maintenance.” Bernard Kuai, Senior Service Manager, DISA Sand Plant.
DISACOOL drops the temperature
The DISACOOL combines the functions of shake-out, casting cooler and sand cooler. It breaks down large sand lumps, fully moistens the sand and pre-cleans castings so less blasting is required. This reduces shotblasting machine wear along with energy and shot consumption.
To turn it into a DISACOOL, DISA’s engineers completely changed the original, locally-sourced cooling drum’s internal structure and redesigned the wind pipes to reverse the air flow direction. Fresh air now flows from the outlet up to the inlet which allows more cold air into the drum.
DISA also redesigned the remoistening system which sprays water onto the sand and castings in the drum near the entrance. As the water evaporates, it cools the sand and castings uniformly. The water vapor generated is blown towards the inlet and carried away by the suction at the inlet end.
The sand-to-iron ratio, sand water content and other metrics like inlet and outlet temperature, determines how much water must be added. The DISACOOL can manage water addition completely automatically using a DISA Monitizer | CIM digital module or semi-automatically with operators manually selecting the water amount on its Water Dosing Panel.
Cooler castings, moist sand
After the DISA team upgraded the cooling drum, the casting discharge temperature plummeted from 250°C to 74°C. The sand discharge temperature also fell dramatically from 160°C with a 0.3-0.5% moisture content to 70°C with a 1.8% moisture content.
Even with the temperature of both castings and sand controlled to below 75°C, shake-out and cooling still only takes 17 minutes – only one minute longer than before. The foundry can now recycle its sand and blast its castings immediately after shake-out.
“The customer is very satisfied with how well their cooling drum now operates,” says Bernard Kuai, Senior Service Manager for DISA Sand Plant. “DISACOOL is a very effective and energy-efficient way to cool castings and sand that needs very little operator supervision or maintenance. We can supply a DISACOOL as a complete or partial package, license it for local manufacture or, as in this case, upgrade an existing cooling drum to full DISACOOL specification.”
