Examples | Cyclones and risers | Carbon electrodes | Slates | Pre-cast refractory blocks | Cast-iron products for the mining industry | Accessories for the aluminum industry cast-houses

Cast-iron products for the mining industry

 Use of SonicByte^TM for quality control of complex geometry cast-iron products used in the mining industry

The mining industry uses different types of cast-iron units as wear componants or for mill liners (see Fig. 1). These units having various geometries and sizes can contain defects causing their fracture in service, and consequently production shut downs.

The quality control of one of such types of units was made by acoustic resonance, using SonicByte^TM, from a batch involving 32 units. Due to the complex geometry of the tested units, their relative quality was quantified by using an acoustic signature method coupled to a statistical analysis technique. From the characteristics of the acoustic signal generated by each unit (under flexural mode), it has been possible to classified them in function of their relative quality, as shown on Figure 2.

 Fig. 1: Wear components (a and b); Mill liners (c and d) - Taken from Norcast web site.

 Fig. 2: Cast-iron units classification in function of their relative quality as detected by SonicByte^TM.

Following this work, 41% of the tested units showed a lower relative quality of which nearly 19% (6 pieces) were recommended to be subjected to additional inspection to locate their defects. Traditionally, ultrasonic techniques are employed for this purpose with cast-iron products. The use of these techniques should be limited to a minimum number of units because of their to high execution time (i.e., various dozens of minutes/unit as compared to about 1 second/unit with the SonicByte^TM).