CR’s Maryborough foundry based in Queensland, Australia, offers a large range of ferrous casting solutions, servicing both domestic and international markets. In operation for over 100 years, the Foundry draws on this experience and expertise to deliver globally recognized and leading-edge products.
Specializing in high integrity, structural cast steel products for demanding mining applications, the foundry produces bucket lips for excavators, rope shovels, and wheel loaders, along with dragline buckets, GET & rigging components. Casting solutions are also offered across a broad range of industries including Power Generation, Oil & Gas, Recycling Industry, Sugar, Heavy Transport, and Cement.
To ensure that CR’s Maryborough Foundry produces top of the range products, leading-edge design is crucial. Since 2006, CR has partnered with MAGMA, a world-leading developer for casting process simulation to design and develop castings for mining products.
After implementing MAGMASOFT® (including MAGMAsteel, MAGMAstress, MAGMAstress HT) into the Foundry design process, CR saw a reduction of casting defects and subsequent repair work.
In 2016, CR designed the DecaEdge™ cast lip, which was designed to fit large mining wheel loaders. CR is the only manufacturer in the world to offer a range of cast lips for large mining wheel loaders. The first iterations of the DecaEdge design required fabrication from three separately cast parts, each two meters in length. The entire process for manufacturing tied up space, as well as labor, in the workshop. The production team identified that the foundry had the physical capability to produce the part as one piece, instead of three.
The main challenge of the redesigned part was to stay within the bounds of dimensional tolerances of the finished product. The increase in size and complexity of the geometry made this a difficult task. The DecaEdge cast part is 6.2 m long and 1.2 m wide with a weight of 5000 kg.
The team at CR collaborated with MAGMASOFT® to design and analyze the runner system to have a balanced filling, as well as a proper temperature distribution at the end of the filling. After evaluation of all technical aspects, the team concluded that the finished tolerances could be achieved, and a case was proposed to management, including cost and quality benefits.
This design project saw the DecaEdge boast a redesigned part with optimized plane alignment, spade angle, and material placement, which removed an outdated plate lip feature. This lead extended lifetime of the DecaEdge product, leading to overall cost and maintenance savings for the end user.
Thanks to the in-depth analysis conducted by both companies, CR’s Maryborough Foundry has increased its efficiency and is now able to increase productivity rates throughout the Foundry, hitting new records on cast lip production rates.
