Experimental Investigation in Conventional and Microwave Assisted Casting process of ASTM B23 Babbitt Alloy

Abstract

Casting of metals is one of the preferred manufacturing process used in industries for producing variety of components from simple to complex shape and also from very small to huge size. Processing of metals by using Microwave Technology offers several advantages like superior quality, time saving, cost effectiveness, clean and environmentally friendly. In present, microwave assisted casting is one of the new approach in which microwave energy is used for melting the metal and carry out the casting process. There are two approaches, one in which melting, pouring and solidification of raw metal is done completely inside the microwave furnace and the second one in which only melting is done inside the microwave furnace and remaining steps viz. pouring and solidification of raw metal is done outside the microwave furnace. This paper reports on in-situ microwave assisted die casting process of bush with Φ35 mm OD, Φ25 mm ID and 35 mm Length, using microwave furnace at 2.45 GHz and 1.4 kW and conventional die casting process by using muffle furnace of 3.5kW of ASTM B23 Tin based Babbitt alloy. It was found that microwave assisted die cast bush is having superior quality as compared with that of conventional cast bush. It was also found that microwave assisted die casting process reports time saving of 07 Minutes and power saving of 1.1 kWh as compared with conventional die casting process. Further SEM images of microwave bush casting showed uniform grain distribution as compared to SEM images of conventional die casted bush.