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Improving blind riser efficiency: providing blind risers with adequate passage to atmospheric air and a hotter top metal front will increase your casting yield and reduce your energy costs.

Article Excerpt
Confronted with escalating raw material and energy costs, ferrous metalcaster AG Anderson, a division of AmeriCast Technologies, London, Ontario, Canada, went back to the basics by re-evaluating sound and simple techniques.

Blind risers, or closed risers, are used to feed various casting sections. Although they can be indispensable when feeding certain complex configurations, they are less efficient than open risers. AG Anderson designed a new blind riser system that was able to improve casting yield and reduce labor and energy costs for large carbon and low alloy steel castings.

Blind risers are located in the lower section of castings, or just hidden at a level below the top risers, and like open risers, they act as reservoirs that supply liquid metal into a casting as it contracts on solidification. Open risers break through the cope to the top of the mold and are entirely exposed to the outside atmosphere. Blind risers' top metal fronts are not exposed to the atmosphere, so a vacuum pocket sometimes occurs at the top of the riser. In order to prevent the formation of the pressurized zone, the liquid contained by the blind riser must have a free passage to the outside atmosphere.

AG Anderson's venting technique offers a practical solution to avoid the vacuum pocket in blind risers.

Chamber Made

Depending on its position in relation to the top or edge of the mold, the blind riser is subject...

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