The Mechanical Handling and Storing of Material

CASTING MACHINES 173 to be lowered into railway trucks. The different charges of the furnace being successively cast with this machine, the moulds are kept thereby at a low red heat. To prevent the metal adhering to the moulds, they are coated by a spray on their return journey to the pouring pot. The capacity of the machine is 1,500 tons per day of twenty-four hours. The “Uehling” machine at the Bethlehem Steel Co.’s Works, U.S.A., is 165 ft. long and travels at the rate of 22 ft. 6 in. per minute up the usual incline, the moulds being spaced at a pitch of 12 in. It is driven by a 40 H.P. electro-motor, and the capacity is twenty-three pigs per minute weighing 110 lb. each. The “Heyl and Patterson” Casting Machine.—The first of these machines erected in this country was, it is believed, installed by the Palmer Shipbuilding and Iron Co., Jarrow-on-Tyne, and set to work in the beginning of 1899, at the Cambria Works. This Fig. 228. Delivery of the Pigs from Casting to Cooling Conveyor. machine, which is here illustrated, has a capacity of 1,500 tons in twenty-four hours. It consists of a steel frame, combining a water tank with an upper and lower track, upon which runs the chain carrying the pressed steel moulds into which the liquid pig iron is poured through the intervening runners. These are so arranged that the two or more rows of moulds can be fed simultaneously. The principal feature consists in this, that the pouring of the metal takes place into moulds whilst partly submerged in the water contained in the tank. The moulds travel in that condition for a sufficient length of time to allow the metal to solidify, after which they are quite submerged and travel through the tank to nearly the other end of the machine, at which point the chains run up a slight incline to the loading end. The moulds on their return journey pass over two furnaces in which crude oil or similar material is burning, and being still damp, readily receive a covering of soot which adheres to their interior and lips. The heat of the furnace also serves to so complete the drying of the moulds that they are ready for refilling.