Shoutout to the old timer at the Canton foundry who called me out on my gating

I was setting up a pour for a simple gear blank, using the same single gate I always do. Frank, who's been there since the 80s, walked by and just said 'You're starving that corner, kid.' He showed me how the metal was cooling too fast before it filled, which explained the shrink cavity I kept getting in the same spot. Has anyone else had a moment like that where a simple change to a two-gate system fixed a recurring flaw?

2 comments

2 Comments

wade7671mo agoMost Upvoted

Frank's advice is solid for that gear blank, but I've seen the opposite problem too. Last year at our shop we kept getting cold shuts on some bracket castings after switching to a two gate setup. Turns out we were introducing turbulence that messed up the fill. Sometimes going back to a single, well placed gate with a bigger runner is the fix. It really depends on the part geometry and where the hot spots are.

faith_thomas1mo ago

Yeah, we had to do that on a housing once, a single big gate fixed our cold shut issue.