Sustainable Optimisation of a Carousel for Foundry Processes

Foundry technology includes a family of processes that traditionally consume high amounts of energy. It is fundamental to apply the principles of Sustainable Manufacturing to increase the energy eciency of these processes. This paper describes the research activity carried out to improve the eciency of a carousel, which allows the automatisation of aluminium gravity die casting process, consisting of di↵erent phases: die preparation, filling with molten aluminium alloy, solidification time, die opening, and part extraction. It is demonstrated that the eciency is a function of the disposition of the dies mounted on the carousel, due to the solidification time (which is the limiting process parameter), and di↵erent cycle times depending on the realised product. The authors propose an optimised layout, which reduces the cycle time while maintaining the same level of the casting final quality. This reduction in the cycle time significantly improves the sustainability of the foundry process.