EXPERT SYSTEM FOR QUALITY CONTROL OF SMALL SIZE.--GREY CAST IRON CASTINGS MADE BY -CLAY BONDED GREEN SAND

Abstract

Grey cast iron castings are produced maximum among all metal castings. Further these casting and produced easily and economically. However due to more uncontrolled conditions the percentage rejects are more (approximately 15%) in comparison to those other casting processes. Therefore to findout the causes of rejection and improve the quality of castings become of almost importance. The guidelines and data available for improving the quality of products are scattered •are not precisely available at all places of work. So the data and knowledge in the domain of grey iron castings made by clay bonded green sand has been collected for viz. (i) selection of material and their proportion (ii) properties of moulding sand (iii) Testing and control of moulding sand (iv) grey iron engineering properties and composition (v) pouring rate and pouring time (vi) inspection of castings (vii) the various defect, defect diagnosis, analysis of causes and remedial actions. So to utilise expertise and to improve quality, `GIC-EXPERT'-expert system for quality control of small sized grey iron castings made by clay bonded green sand has been developed. This package has been developed using `C' language in MS-DOS environment. The `GIC-EXPERT' gives guidelines and optimal value for every important process variable to control quality. It also diagnoses the defects and gives analysis of all possible causes and remedial action to be taken. The colored diagram of each defect with description make this package more useful for practical work. (