Improving the technology of manufacturing cast brake drums in pink sand molds

The object of research in the paper is the production technology of casting «brake drum» from cast iron of the basic grade SCh20 according to GOST 1412-85 (DSTU EN 1561, EN-GJL-200). The existing problem is that due to the imperfection of the technological processes of manufacturing castings, final internal defects of a shrinking nature are possible. This can lead to a decrease in the strength and operational reliability of the drums, regardless of the chemical composition, which may meet the technical conditions and should provide the specified strength indicators according to the grade of cast iron.Based on the results of 3D modeling, it has been found that with the existing technology of manufacturing brake drum castings in one-time sand molds, final shrinkage defects are formed in the upper part of the casting. To eliminate this problem, a decision is proposed to increase the allowance for mechanical processing on the upper surface of the casting. The possible excess of the mass of the casting and excess consumption of the alloy that will occur when implementing this solution can be compensated by reducing the allowance on other surfaces based on their optimization by the method of dimensional chains and reducing the thickness of the casting wall. For this, a reduction in the carbon content in the alloy is proposed as a factor in increasing the tensile strength of cast iron. On the basis of 90 serial meltings in industrial conditions, the possibility of increasing the strength limit of cast iron by approximately 11 % by reducing the average carbon content in cast iron from 3.45 % to 3.4 % has been proven.The proposed solutions are the essence of improving the production technology of cast brake drums, which are produced by casting in one-time sand molds.The presented study will be useful for machine-building enterprises that have foundries in their structure, where iron is melted for the production of castings.