Twenty guides, written by the people who build the instruments.
Free, with no sign-up and no gate. They're hosted on sandtesting.org, the Versatile learning site.
Calibration and compliance
- Foundry sand testing equipment calibrationWhat has to be calibrated, how often, and what the certificate must carry.
- Green compression strength testerProving ring checks, and the errors on a strength machine that go unnoticed.
- Permeability meter calibrationOrifice checks, standard specimens and why readings drift with the seal.
- Moisture and compactabilityCalibrating the two tests that decide most of what happens at the molding machine.
- Hardness tester calibrationBrinell, Rockwell and Vickers, and the test blocks that keep them honest.
- Calibration intervals and IATF 16949Setting a defensible interval, and what happens when an instrument is found out of tolerance.
- Traceability and certificatesThe unbroken chain from your bench to a national standard, in plain terms.
Casting defects, and what the sand was doing
- Casting defects: types, causes, preventionThe overview, organized the way a foundry actually sorts a rejection bin.
- BlowholesGas that could not get out. Moisture, permeability and ramming, in that order.
- Shrinkage porosityFeeding, modulus and the pour temperature that quietly moved.
- Sand inclusionLoose sand, weak molds and the strength number that was never checked.
- Cold shutTwo streams that met and did not fuse. Usually temperature, sometimes section.
- MisrunMetal that stopped short, and the handful of things that reliably cause it.
- Metal penetrationGrain fineness, compaction and coating, and how to tell which one it was.
- Keeping a defect registerWhat to write down at the cleaning bench so the record is worth analyzing later.
- Identifying defects: a guide for new inspectorsTelling one defect from another at the bench, before you can name a cause.
- Sand properties and casting defects, read togetherWhich sand number to look at first for each defect, and which ones mislead you.
Reading a rejection record
- Foundry rejection analysisGetting from a monthly total to a corrective action somebody can actually take.
- Heat-wise rejection analysisSeparating melt problems from mold problems by grouping rejections per heat.
- Cavity-wise rejection analysisFinding the one bad impression in a pattern, rather than blaming the whole batch.