Abstract
Vacuum molding process(V-process) has several benefits such as a lower total production cost and a high quality casting comparing to the conventional sand molding. Influence of the gating design on the molten metal flow was investigated in this study. General criteria for the gating design of the castings and commercial codes for the flow and solidification analysis were used to attain the optimized gating design in V-process. Though mold cavity was filled smoothly under the low initial velocity of molten metal, molten metal dashed against the upper part of the mold before the completion of the mold filling with higher initial molten metal velocity and fell soon. This phenomenon may affect collapsing the mold shape, however it is thought that the possibility of burning out of the vinyl by the molten metal is not so high because vinyl is coated with refractory material.
