Journal article
Hands-on Digital Tools for Metalcasting Engineering Education in Foundry Science
International journal of metalcasting, Vol.19(5), pp.2531-2543
09/2025
DOI: 10.1007/s40962-024-01488-1
Abstract
Metalcasting is a vital manufacturing process that produces essential products for various industries. Despite being one of the oldest known production methods, foundries are undergoing significant modernization, incorporating advanced techniques such as computational modeling and automation to enhance efficiency and precision in their workflows. Although there are concerted efforts in modernizing foundry operations, the industry's workforce has continued to decline which has led to severe labor shortages in foundries across the USA. Hence, there is a critical need for both the foundry educators and industry leaders to formulate new engagement modalities to recruit-develop-retain current and future foundry talents. The motivation for this effort is to develop a new foundry education toolkit that leverages existing digital tools (e.g., smartphones, Python programming, and additive manufacturing) which are familiar to current high school and college students. Inspired by the American Foundry Society's (AFS) Foundry in a Box, this paper presents a 21st century "Foundry in a Box 4.0" engineering education tool. The previous iteration of "Foundry in a Box" focused on metalcasting demonstrations with molten metal in foundries, which can be difficult to stage in a classroom setting, requires extensive safety and personal protective equipment (PPE) and was often not connected to evolving curriculum. This study presents a new metalcasting education tool that ties metalcasting to existing student learning objectives with easily accessible, safe, and inexpensive hands-on learning tools. Using transparent acrylic molds, this study demonstrates how experiments with water as the working fluid can teach students the fundamentals of metalcasting. This effort also demonstrates different casting phenomena such as air entrainment, fountaining, and the influence of pouring liquid on mold filling. In addition, basic computer vision and computational fluid dynamics tools are seamlessly integrated within the toolkit to introduce complementary skills that are currently deployed in foundries to current students in classroom setting. Future efforts will focus on adding solidification- and feeding- demonstrations that could include food-grade liquid that solidifies at room temperature in the presence of inoculants which will introduce advanced concepts in foundry science.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- Hands-on Digital Tools for Metalcasting Engineering Education in Foundry Science
- Creators
- Philip King - Pennsylvania State UniversityJay Sim - Pennsylvania State UniversityKazi Safowan Shahed - Pennsylvania State UniversityCasey Harwood - University of IowaGuha Manogharan - Pennsylvania State University
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Publication Details
- International journal of metalcasting, Vol.19(5), pp.2531-2543
- DOI
- 10.1007/s40962-024-01488-1
- ISSN
- 1939-5981
- eISSN
- 2163-3193
- Publisher
- SPRINGER INT PUBL AG
- Number of pages
- 13
- Grant note
- 1944120 / National Science Foundation; National Science Foundation (NSF) NSF Graduate Research Fellowship; National Science Foundation (NSF) DGE1255832 / National Science Foundation (NSF) under Career Award; National Science Foundation (NSF)
- Language
- English
- Electronic publication date
- 12/03/2024
- Date published
- 09/2025
- Academic Unit
- Mechanical Engineering
- Record Identifier
- 9984758288302771
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