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The platform for the Entire Casting Industry
Suppliers
Finite Solutions Inc
4769 Highland Park Dr ,
53086-9441 Slinger, WI,
United States
Information
Finite Solutions Inc had its' beginnings in 1985, when Larry Smiley wrote a 2-D solidification simulation program for the PC. At that time, Larry was an operating foundryman, and the software was sold under the name of AFSolid, through the American Foundry Society. Larry continued to expand the product, and in 1993 AFS introduced the AFS Solidification System (3D), a full three dimensional implementation of the software. At this point, Larry formed FSI to spend full time in software development and support.
Dave Schmidt ran the AFSoftware Service from 1983-1995. In 1995 Dave joined Larry at FSI to spend full time in marketing and support of the software, which, until 2001, continued to be sold through AFS. This included a transition from DOS to Windows, when AFSolid 2000 was born. In 2001, AFS and FSI parted ways, and FSI has been operating independantly ever since. At this time, AFSOLID 2000 became SOLIDCast.
Since 2001, we have added the OPTICast and FLOWCast modules. The software has been under continuous development and improvement, and now has built-in gating and riser design functions, in addition to its' filling and solidification analyses. Over 700 companies and schools world-wide use the package.
Products
No other casting modeling program offers POWER, EASE OF USE and ACCURACY like SOLIDCast®
SOLIDCast®
SOLIDCast® lets you see how your casting will solidify before you make pattern equipment, dies and costly mistakes. Pour your test castings on the computer, not on the foundry floor! Design gates, risers and test them out before making your first casting. Solidification modeling helps you to shorten lead times, produce higher quality and improve yield. All of this means lower costs, higher profits and improved marketability for your foundry.
Investment Cast Steel Valve Body
SOLIDCast® can be used to simulate castings poured in gray iron, ductile iron, steel, aluminum, copper-base, magnesium, nickel-based and almost any other alloy. A database of several hundred alloys, with their properties, is included.
With SOLIDCast® you can simulate processes such as green sand, chemically-bonded sand, investment and permanent mold. You can use sleeves (insulating or exothermic), chills, hot topping, cooling channels, heating elements and just about anything else that is used in the metal casting process.
SOLIDCast® now contains the new Riser Design Wizard and Gating Design Wizard. These tools allow you rig new castings in just a few minutes from a 3D CAD model, using actual process data, not guesses based on simple geometry. Since casting alloy, mold material and actual process conditions are taken into account, there is no more accurate way to calculate gating and riser designs for castings.
With SOLIDCast® you can import 3D models from CAD, or build your own models without CAD.
Ductile Iron Steering Knuckle
Graphics are the most sophisticated available, with fully movable 3D models, X-ray images, high-resolution color images and AVI video files. You can send movies to anyone with a Windows PC
Under-Riser Shrink in Gray Iron Casting
Contact us for more details about this exciting technology.
FLOWCast® is the new flow modeling module from Finite Solutions, Inc. FLOWCast works in conjunction with models created bySOLIDCast®.
Flow modeling allows you to view a simulation, on the computer, showing how the molten metal will flow through gating systems and fill the casting cavity in the mold. FLOWCast models convection, conduction and radiation within the mold cavity. This allows you to analyze your casting and gating design to predict and minimize flow-related defects such as misruns due to premature solidification, or oxide formation or mold erosion due to excessive velocities during filling.
FLOWCast allows two options for modeling mold filling. The first is a Quick Simulation, which makes a few simplifying assumptions. For many processes, the Quick Simulation offers a fast and accurate way to model the flow of the liquid metal and the temperature distribution of the casting due to filling.
Top filling an Investment Casting
The Full Simulation option is a full-featured CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) simulation of flow, based on solution of the Navier-Stokes equations for fluid flow. With FLOWCast, you can view progressive temperature, fluid velocity and fluid pressure during the fill, from any angle of view.
FLOWCast is integrated with the SOLIDCast solidification modeling system. This means that FLOWCast uses models and meshes created with SOLIDCast. Since SOLIDCast is the world's easiest-to-use casting modeling system, flow modeling has never been easier. Just import your casting model from 3D CAD or build your model from SOLIDCast tools, mesh the model, and run FLOWCast to simulate mold filling.
Initial filling of Iron Casting showing metal velocity
The results from the FLOWCast simulation are used in SOLIDCast to model the final solidification of the casting, resulting in a completely integrated casting modeling system.
Initial gate filling in Steel Sand Casting
Design and analysis of gating and mold filling with FLOWCast is as simple as solidification modeling with SOLIDCast.
OPTICast® is a new software product that works in conjunction with the SOLIDCast® solidification modeling system. OPTICast® uses theHyperOpt® system from Altair Engineering, Inc., the leader in the field of optimization software.
What does Optimization do?
Most solidification modeling systems require the engineer to create a design, run a simulation, review the results, and then make a decision about how to modify the design to achieve a good casting. This can take several design iterations to get to the end result.
Optimization is a technique that allows the foundry engineer to start with an initial design for a casting, with gating and risering, as a 3D model in the SOLIDCast® modeling system. The user then selects the following elements:
Design Variables: These are elements of the design that are allowed to vary. For example, this could be the height and diameter of a riser. It could also be the pouring temperature of the alloy, or the preheat temperature of an investment shell.
Constraints: These are specifications for results that determine whether a particular design is acceptable. For example, the foundry engineer might specify a certain yield percentage as the minimum value acceptable. One might also specify a certain level of macroporosity as the maximum level acceptable.
The Objective Function: This describes what the foundry engineer is trying to achieve. Examples might be to maximize the yield, minimize shrinkage or minimize the total solidification time.
Once these elements are identified in the model, the user then launches an Optimization Run. This consists of a series of simulations in which the design conditions are varied under the control of HyperOpt®, model changes are made and simulation results are evaluated, all completely automatically, until the desired result is achieved.
Using OPTICast®, the foundry engineer can start with an initial design and allow the computer to do the work of modifying the design and running simulations to achieve an optimum result.
Now, for the first time, the technology of automated design is brought to the foundry in the form of a practical and easy-to-use design tool.OPTICast® can help you to improve your yield and your quality to an optimum point, while freeing design engineers from the repetitive task of trial-and-error design.
Steel Casting with Optimized Riser Design
13% Yield Improvement, automatically!
