Due to the presence of harmful substances in resins those mould sands may be hazardous to the natural environment and workers. The general assessment of harmfulness of sands used for molds and cores encompasses 2 basic points: emission of hazardous substances during processes of preparing sands, pouring mold with liquid metals (high temperatures), cooling and shaking-out; possibility of washing out hazardous substances from used sands to the environment, during storage or economic use outside foundries. We present the results of research on the emission of BTEX compounds from mould sands with phenolic resins during pouring liquid metal of different temperature (cast iron and Al alloy). The research was conducted according to the original method prepared by the authors, which has been used for years in cooperation with various foundries (Poland, abroad).

The constantly developing and the broadly understood automation of production processes in foundry industry, creates both new working conditions - better working standards, faster and more accurate production - and new demands for previously used materials as well as opportunities to generate new foundry defects. Those high requirements create the need to develop further the existing elements of the casting production process. This work focuses on mechanical and thermal deformation of moulding sands prepared in hot-box technology. Moulding sands hardened in different time periods were tested immediately after hardening and after cooling. The obtained results showed that hardening time period in the range 30-120 sec does not influence the mechanical deformation of tested moulding sands significantly. Hot distortion tests proved that moulding sands prepared in hot-box technology can be characterized with stable thermal deformation up to the temperature of circa 320oC.

Modern techniques of castings production, including moulding sands production, require a strict technological regime and high quality

materials. In the case of self-hardening moulding sands with synthetic binders those requirements apply mainly to sand, which adds to

more than 98% of the whole moulding sand mixture. The factors that affect the quality of the moulding sands are both chemical (SiO2

,

Fe2O3 and carbonates content) and physical. Among these factors somewhat less attention is paid to the granulometric composition of the

sands. As a part of this study, the effect of sand quality on bending strength Rgu

and thermal deformation of self-hardening moulding sands

with furfural and alkyd resin was assessed. Moulding sands with furfural resin are known [1] to be the most susceptible to the sand quality.

A negative effect on its properties has, among others, high content of clay binder and so-called subgrains (fraction smaller than 0,1mm),

which can lead to neutralization of acidic hardeners (in the case of moulding sands with furfuryl resin) and also increase the specific

surface, what forces greater amount of binding agents. The research used 5 different quartz sands originating from different sources and

characterized with different grain composition and different clay binder content.

The paper presents possibility of using biodegradable materials as parts of moulding sands’ binders based on commonly used in foundry

practice resins. The authors focus on thermal destruction of binding materials and thermal deformation of moulding sands with tested

materials. All the research is conducted for the biodegradable material and two typical resins separately. The point of the article is to show

if tested materials are compatible from thermal destruction and thermal deformation points of view. It was proved that tested materials

characterized with similar thermal destruction but thermal deformation of moulding sands with those binders was different.

Artificial neural networks are one of the modern methods of the production optimisation. An attempt to apply neural networks for controlling the quality of bentonite moulding sands is presented in this paper. This is the assessment method of sands suitability by means of detecting correlations between their individual parameters. The presented investigations were aimed at the selection of the neural network able to predict the active bentonite content in the moulding sand on the basis of this sand properties such as: permeability, compactibility and the compressive strength. Then, the data of selected parameters of new moulding sand were set to selected artificial neural network models. This was made to test the universality of the model in relation to other moulding sands. An application of the Statistica program allowed to select automatically the type of network proper for the representation of dependencies occurring in between the proposed moulding sand parameters. The most advantageous conditions were obtained for the uni-directional multi-layer perception (MLP) network. Knowledge of the neural network sensitivity to individual moulding sand parameters, allowed to eliminate not essential ones.

The paper deals with squeeze casting technology. For this research a direct squeeze casting method has been chosen. The influence of process parameters variation (casting temperature, mold temperature, pressure) on mechanical properties and structure will be observed. The thicknesses of the individual walls were selected based on the use of preferred numbers and series of preferred numbers (STN ISO 17) with the sequence of 3.15, 4.00, 5.00, 6.00 and 8.00 mm. The width of each wall was 22 mm with a length of 100 mm. As an experimental material was chosen the AlSi12 and AlSi7Mg0.3 alloys. The mechanical properties (UTS, E) for individual casting parameters and their individual areas of different thicknesses were evaluated. In the structure the influence of pressure on the change of the eutectic morphology, the change of the volume of eutectic and the primary alpha phase, the effect of the pressure on the more fine-grain and the regularization of the structure were evaluated.

The results of testing the strength properties of experimental ceramic materials containing spending moulding sand after initial mechanical reclamation as a material for subsequent layers of the stucco composition were presented. Tests were carried out on spent moulding sands from various foundry technologies, i.e. sand with furfuryl resin and sand with hydrated sodium silicate. The spent, agglomerated moulding sand has undergone a crushing process. Next, the required granular fractions used for individual layers of the stucco material were separated. Ceramic samples, in which the spent moulding sand was a substitute for fresh silica sand in successive layers of the stucco composition, were prepared. As a reference material, identical ceramic samples were used but with all layers made from the fresh silica sand. Samples prepared in this way were used to determine the bending strength of ceramic materials in the temperature range from 20 to 900ºC. The obtained values of the bending strength have demonstrated that spent moulding sand can be used in investment casting with no adverse effect on the strength of ceramic materials.

Casting industry has been enriched with the processes of mechanization and automation in production. They offer both better working standards, faster and more accurate production, but also have begun to generate new opportunities for new foundry defects. This work discusses the disadvantages of processes that can occur, to a limited extend, in the technologies associated with mould assembly and during the initial stages of pouring. These defects will be described in detail in the further part of the paper and are mainly related to the quality of foundry cores, therefore the discussion of these issues will mainly concern core moulding sands. Four different types of moulding mixtures were used in the research, representing the most popular chemically bonded moulding sands used in foundry practise. The main focus of this article is the analysis of the influence of the binder type on mechanical and thermal deformation in moulding sands.

The paper presents the results of an investigation of the thermal deformation of moulding sands with an inorganic (geopolymer) binder with a relaxation additive, whose main task is to reduce the final (residual) strength and improves knocking-out properties of moulding sand. The moulding sand without a relaxation additive was the reference point. The research was carried out using the hot-distortion method (DMA apparatus from Multiserw-Morek). The results were combined with linear deformation studies with determination of the linear expansion factor (Netzsch DIL 402C dilatometer). The study showed that the introduction of relaxation additive has a positive effect on the thermal stability of moulding sand by limiting the measured deformation value, in relation to the moulding sand without additive. In addition, a relaxation additive slightly changes the course of the dilatometric curve. Change in the linear dimension of the moulding sand sample with the relaxation additive differs by only 0.05%, in comparison to the moulding sand without additive.

The article takes into consideration the researches concerning inserting the Glassex additive to the microwaved-hardened and selfhardened moulding sands with water glass. In the research different types of ester hardeners to self-hardened moulding sands with water glass were used. The influence of Glassex additive on retained strength of moulding sands with different hardeners and prepared by different technologies of hardening were tested. The influence of different hardeners and the technology of hardening on retained strength of moulding sand with water glass and the Glassex additive were also estimated.

Blast furnace and cupola furnace are furnace aggregates used for pig iron and cast iron production. Both furnace aggregates work on very similar principles: they use coke as the fuel, charge goes from the top to down, the gases flow against it, etc. Their construction is very similar (cupola furnace is usually much smaller) and the structures of pig iron and cast iron are very similar too. Small differences between cast iron and pig iron are only in carbon and silicon content. The slags from blast furnace and cupola furnace are very similar in chemical composition, but blast furnace slag has a very widespread use in civil engineering, primarily in road construction, concrete and cement production, and in other industries, but the cupola furnace slag utilization is minimal. The contribution analyzes identical and different properties of both kinds of slags, and attempts to explain the differences in their uses. They are compared by the contribution of the blast furnace slag cooled in water and on air, and cupola furnace slag cooled on air and granulated in water. Their chemical composition, basicity, hydraulicity, melting temperature and surface were compared to explain the differences in their utilization.

Casting industry has been enriched with the processes of mechanization and automation in production. They offer both better working standards, faster and more accurate production, but also have begun to generate new opportunities for new foundry defects. This work discusses the disadvantages of processes that can occur, to a limited extend, in the technologies associated with mould assembly and during the initial stages of pouring. These defects will be described in detail in the further part of the paper and are mainly related to the quality of foundry cores, therefore the discussion of these issues will mainly concern core moulding sands. Four different types of moulding mixtures were used in the research, representing the most popular chemically bonded moulding sands used in foundry practise. The main focus of this article is the analysis of the influence of the binder type on mechanical and thermal deformation in moulding sands.