Page 37 - january

HISTORY

As soon as the taphole of the furnace
will open and a dazzling stream will burst out
of it, the pouring mechanism starts to operate.
It takes the mobile hot liquid into the tray and
directs it to the molds - the forms in which
the metal solidifies. These mechanisms are
arranged differently. If the furnace is small
and the molds that can take all the melt fit in
front of the tap hole, the casting mechanism is
View of the Soviet filling machine. equipped with a rotating tray, which bypasses
the molds in turn and fills them. In large
furnaces, mechanisms with movable molds are installed. Coupled like a tractor caterpillar, they
pass in a row past the tray, fill up with metal, drop-frozen beads and return for a new portion.
Great is the merit of Russian technicians who created a mechanism that frees people from hard
and dangerous work, saving metal from damage.
However, in vain we would look in the foreign technical literature for indications of the
primacy of the Russians in this most important invention. Bourgeois technical historians shared
the glory between Peirce, who patented his filling mechanism only in 1895, and Walker, who
built such a machine two years later.
In addition, the first in the world, Russian metallurgists began to build cupola furnaces
that melt pig iron for large castings. Already in 1794, at the Gusevsky Batashev plant, there was
a foundry with two cupola furnaces. Each of them gave 60 poods of liquid iron a day. Cupola was
also used at the Sentula plant.
In our country, the first foundry with cupolas that did not depend on the domain was born.
To appreciate the significance of this innovation, let's go back a little. Let us recall that when
the blast furnace appeared, foundry was greatly developed. In addition, this is understandable.
The blast furnaces produced a lot of molten iron, which was easy to pour into the molds that
stood right there by the furnace. The products cast in this way were cheap and satisfied the
customers. However, when mechanical engineering began to develop rapidly, the requirements
for the quality of castings also increased. In order to build solid and good machines, solid parts
were also needed. And the castings from the newly obtained cast iron - as it is called, the "first
melt" cast iron - just did not differ in particular strength. The cast iron of the first heat usually
contains a lot of impurities, which is badly reflected in the quality of the casting.
The embarrassment in which both metallurgists and mechanical engineers found
themselves was eliminated by Russian innovators. They began to build cupolas - special furnaces
for making cast iron. The raw material for it was cast iron of the first melting. It was loaded
into a furnace, melted, burned out harmful impurities, added useful ones, and then poured into
molds. In contrast to the blast furnace, the cast iron obtained in the cupola was called "second
heat" cast iron.

Stanochniy park 37