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Pangborn USA were approached by a large and well-known foundry located in Waupaca, USA to provide an Abrasive Recovery & Waste Minimization Solution.
Our customer manufactures all types of iron castings to the transportation, construction, agriculture and industrial sectors throughout the world.
Their largest foundry is located in Waupaca, USA which operates an integrated system for the handling of waste materials and industrial by-products generated from foundry operations.
The Challenge
The engineering team of the main foundry in the USA expressed concern that reusable abrasives were not being segregated by their current y by-product and abrasive reuse management processes.
Our customer and their team needed a way to separate the waste into clean, non-contaminated materials to facilitate recovery of abrasives with remaining value that may otherwise be lost in the waste stream.
The Solution
Pangborn offers a complete line of abrasive recovery and waste stream solutions that can be incorporated into the design of new equipment, retrofitted on existing blast equipment (from Pangborn or other vendors), or delivered as a stand-alone system. Waupaca’s engineering manager and project engineer selected Pangborn for this high visibility project.
Prior to this, the company had worked with Pangborn on blast wheel conversions which enabled Waupaca to extend the life of their wheel wear parts. Teams from Pangborn and Waupaca worked closely in order to fully understand Waupaca’s by-products and abrasive recovery expectations.
The Solution Design Process
Pangborn’s engineering team designed a customized, stand-alone solution specific to the customers needs. Pangborn reconfigured and integrated current blast machine technology into a recycling system enabling our customer to remove and separate large, heavy, tramp material, smaller waste components such as paper and flashing, as well as the most minute particles of dust and sand.
Key components of the solution include:
- a magnetic separator to separate the abrasives from sand and dust; and,
- a vibratory screener (classifier) to classify and recover the reusable abrasive
During the solution design process, the project scope was expanded to incorporate additional methods of getting materials into the separation system, including new conveyors and increased elevator height. Ultimately, all waste streams went through the separation and screening processes resulting in waste that was separated, sized, and ready to be reused, recycled, or discarded as necessary.
Our customers Foundry’s complex system of waste streams and material flow could have made the installation and implementation of the Pangborn Abrasive Recovery & Waste Stream Solution challenging, creating interruptions of material flow and downtime.
To eliminate these problems and keep any downtime to a minimum, installation and implementation of the classifier began on a Friday afternoon and was up and running by the following Saturday morning.
During the testing phase, Pangborn was able to further fine-tune the solution with a different set of screens better suited to Waupaca’s requirements.
The Foundry’s material handling system is integrated and centralized. If a single component of the new solution went down, the entire plant was at risk of shutting down.
To avert this risk, a fail-safe was built into the system so that if one segment of the overall system was experiencing a problem, it could be bypassed and the plant would continue to run with minimal disruption.
The Benefits
Our customers Foundry installed Pangborn’s customized, stand-alone Abrasive Recovery & Waste Stream solution in the fourth quarter of 2018.
Abrasive recovery was the key driver for the company as abrasives on average cost $800 per ton.
The solution has enabled the company to recapture approximately $30,000 of abrasives per month.
In addition, the solution further solidifies our customers Foundry’s leadership position in environmental innovations and sustainability practices. Alongside additional benefits which include:
- the ability to separate metallic’s from non-metallic’s in the waste stream;
- promoting the beneficial reuse of foundry by-products;
- reduced abrasives cost; and,
- increased productivity
Get a Quote
If you’d like to arrange a consultation to discuss solutions to reduce your Foundry’s waste, manufactured and supplied by Pangborn. Email us at: info@pangborn.com or contact us on – 01352 712412.
