The Mechanical Design And Research Of Castings Gate Cutting Machine

As a near net shape technology, investment casting occupies an irreplaceable positionin the high-precision, complex casting forming. The main characteristics of the methodinclude high dimensional accuracy, and complexity of the casting structure, alloy widelyused, and flexible batch. Because of the above advantages, this method in the industrialfield has a wide range of applications. Its process include pattern making, assemble treesystem, making cavity, dewaxing, roasting, pouring. Subsequent processing includescutting gate, polishing gate etc. Due to the ordinary grinding wheel cutting machine’s cutting speedis too slow, there is no special fixtures, inconvenience for the gate cutting process.Today, in the majorityof domestic foundry cutting gate process still use the artificial hold casting cutting method. Thepotential harm to the human body during the cutting process is very large. The cutting process sparks,large smoke and dust pollution, the worker lack of safety precautions. Therefore studying anautomatic cutting machine which can cut off gate automatically is imperative.In this paper, an automatic cut machine for gate cutting is designed for a precision foundry inBaoding. This machine’s cutting process does not needs human intervention, cutting in a completelyclosed environment, using a spray dust removal technology, eliminating soot pollution to protect thesafety of the worker.Through a large number of actual cutting tests in this foundry. The automatic method of cutting thegate and specific requirements were found. Simultaneously the characteristics of the castings groupstructure has been studied. There are two ways of casting group tree had been find, namely gatesarranged in parallel and gates arranged in vertical. In this paper a special fixture for both castings groupshas been designed respectively.In order to improve the cutting efficiency, a special hydraulic clamp hasbeen designed, besides the double cutting unit alternately cutting, the workpiece collection apparatus,and the auxiliary knife means greatly improve the cutting efficiency.The design of investment castings group gate cutting machine, including five parts: the body,cutting part, table feed part, fixture, spray dust removal system.According to the special requirementsof the gate cut， study the method of castings group gate cutting. Using the design ideas ofHydromechatronics, a systematic analysis of the gate cutting machine is presented. The overall shapeand the mechanical structure were designed. With hydraulic driving the fixture is convenient, reliableclamping. Presetting cutter by laser marker, tool setting is convenient. In additional a feed automaticcontrol system was designed, in which control the feed speed automatically and make the cutting forcematch the feed speed. Thereby it can improve the cutting efficiency without damage the abrasive disk.The whole control system uses PLC as the core of the control system, which make the control systemsimple and reliable.In this paper, the main design of various mechanical structures is discussed, in which the keycomponents are checked to ensure its strength, stiffness to meet the design need. The mechanicalstructure of the gate cutter is all designed as a virtual prototype on Solidworks Platform. By this waysimulate cutting, CAE simulation analysis and make engineering drawings also performed. After acomprehensive and systematic design on computer then a physical prototype is manufactured, which isused for practical cutting test.Through large number of cutting experiment, we found that the cuttingmachine control system working reliably, the cutting efficiency can meet the production requirements.