EFFECTS OF GATING SYSTEMS DESIGN ON THE MECHANICAL PROPERTIES OF CAST ALUMINIUM 6063 ALLOY COMPONENTS

Abstract

The effects of gating system design on the mechanical properties of cast Al-Mg-Si (6063) alloy component were studied, with varying sprue diameters of 10 mm and 12 mm respectively for both pressurized system and non-pressurized systems. A match plate pattern was made for channels and mould cavity preparation, while the pouring temperature is at 6800C. The variation with respect to increasing ingate of 1 to 3 was observed, the resulting castings from the gating system were compared and the micro-structural test, tensile and hardness test were carried out on the casts. The as-cast samples showed that gating system component such as sprue, runner and ingates has effect on the produce castings. The control sample with 10 mm and 12 mm sprue diameters under horizontal top feeding system having no runner has pores within produced casting with reduced tensile strength of 89.8 N/mm2 to 83.1 N/mm2 respectively, in comparison to gating systems design with runner component, whereas samples with 10 mm sprue diameters under pressurized designed systems tend to have increasing tensile strength of 132.6 N/mm2 and 171.1 N/mm2 for 3-ingate and 2-ingate system design respectively, having no sensitive pores compared to samples with 12 mm sprue diameters and the reason for these variation is linked to the ratio in gating system design, where the castings has the runner component for exact double the sprue diameter. While the non-pressurized system with reduced turbulence and increasing cross sectional area towards the mould cavity, had finally increased tensile strength