The Problem

A foundry was tasked with casting a series of components for the transmission of a wind turbine. The largest of the steel casting weighed in at 5,500 lbs. The foundry pursued 3D scanning because one out of  every five castings were determined to be non-conforming mid-way through the machining phase.

The Project

The Veritas services tech requested a complete model of the tooling including core. We then used this to create an inspection and visualization package that accurately and clearly defined the process of assembling the cores for the casting. Once every adjustment to the tooling and the procedure for assembling the tooling was made, the machining phase continued without the unforeseen recycling of these castings.

However, there were still some deficiencies in the final geometry of the part. The design specifications called out for a general tolerance of cast surfaces to be 0.35 mm (or less than 0.014 “) and we were failing in a few critical areas.

The Veritas Solution

Our tech suggested modifying the machining process and incorporate the scan data from each casting into the set up of 5,500# casting before machining. This “Machine Stock Analysis” led to the optimization of the alignment prior to machining. The associated cost of scanning each casting and providing the data to the machine shop was approximately $2,500. After a run of 10 parts through the new process, 10 out of 10 $50k castings made it through the machining phase, were inspected and approved for production. After this project, the foundry was easily able to determine the return on investment of 3D scanning technology and purchased their own software and equipment.