Selected Projects
Lecture, German Foundry Conference 2013 [pdf]
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The trend towards thin-walled steel castings has led to the joint project of the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland, Wolfensberger AG and MAC GmbH. The goal was a new casting technology for thin-walled steel cast parts, including a subsequent assessment of the cost-effectiveness of the new process.
MAC GmbH, together with Wolfensberger AG in Bauma and the Foundry Center at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland, is again involved in research and development. There is a trend towards thin-walled steel castings in the pump industry, in high-temperature applications and in many areas of mechanical engineering. The research partners want to actively meet this trend and prove their innovative strength together. MAC's contribution is to leverage its experience in all foundry industries over a wide range of technologies to develop an innovative concept ready for use.
The objective of the project, funded by the Swiss Commission for Technology and Innovation, is to develop a new casting technology for thin-walled steel castings based on lost molds. Following a concept study, experiments will be carried out on a laboratory scale, which – in the case of a positive evaluation - will lead to the planning and procurement of a pilot plant. The ongoing project not only includes the concept, evaluation and development phase, but also its operational implementation, including the profitability analysis of the new process.
By participating in practice-oriented research projects, MAC GmbH | Consulting and Engineering further develops its expertise as an innovative engineering partner for the realization of future-oriented technologies in practice.
Lecture, Foundry technology conference, Salzburg 2018 [pdf]
If you are interested in receiving the English version of the PDF, please feel free to ask for it!
Together with Benninger Guss AG and Aargau University of Applied Sciences, MAC GmbH is investing in the future. Benninger Guss AG has decades of professional expertise as an iron foundry at the Uzwil site in Switzerland; MAC GmbH brings its experience in the optimization of casting processes into this project. The Foundry Center at the University of Applied Sciences rounds off the partnership for the project funded by the Swiss Commission for Technology and Innovation.
The customer requirements increase with technologically and economically demanding large cast components. The worldwide trend towards precise shaping, special materials and ever faster production times call for the further development of casting processes and technologies.
While preserving the casting quality, the cooling time of a large component in the sand mold should be at least halved.
In addition, a numerical simulation program will be extended by the mold cooling and the influence of the cooling on the resulting component properties will be tested. The project is rounded off by assessing the resulting cost-effectiveness when using the optimized procedure.
With the results obtained from this project, MAC GmbH | Consulting and Engineering presented itself again as the engineering partner for future-oriented technologies.
From June 2010 to April 2012, we provided intensive support to our customers in the field of Mg die casting – on-site in the foundry - with the help of a MAC die-casting engineer employed as a “resident engineer” and carried out a project with various focuses.
In the spring of 2008, we began concept engineering for a large “greenfield” iron foundry in an extremely demanding large-scale project near Busan, South Korea: An iron foundry with an annual output of up to 165,000 tons of good casting for the production of large cylinder liners for the use in two-stroke marine diesel engines. Not only the iron foundry was planned as such, but also the entire casting process incl. sprue systems, mold filling and solidification simulation, pattern making, mold design and the sophisticated gray cast metallurgy with specially developed hard phases for the low-wear cylinder surfaces were developed.
With the very good detail engineering of MAC GmbH both in Switzerland and at the customer's site, the casting of the first casting molds as well as the first cylinder liners could already be ensured and carried out in November 2008. The project was successfully completed in the spring of 2009 with the casting of the first metallurgically perfect castings.
From January 2004 to August 2009, we were involved in the planning and implementation of the new raw cast manufacturing plant for small engines. Among our tasks was the design of the entire production lines, with the core making using the inorganic core making process of the company Laempe & Mössner GmbH and the gravity die casting process of the company Global Foundry System s.l.r., Italy.
Already in the time of our vocational training and later in the journeyman and managerial time, we have acquired the procedures for large castings. Our knowledge is not limited to the molding and casting technology of large cast parts, but we are able to reduce the cooling times of large castings massively thanks to our experience and thereby to improve the properties.
Motorengehäuse, Sulzer Oberwinterthur ca. 1980
Zylindergruss, Sulzer Oberwinterthur ca. 1980