Temperature-controlled Slurries

Many Rheocasting technologies work with temperature control of the slurry. The control system adjusts the cooling of the melt to the slurry temperature according to a current measurement. Do you know how accurate that measurement has to be?

Slurries are a mixture of the liquid and solid phases of a metal and are defined by their solid fraction. The solid fraction itself is not that easy to determine. It requires quenching the slurry and analysing the microstructure. But the effects of large changes in the solid fraction are easily visible while pouring into the shot sleeve.

The temperature difference between an quite thick and a very liquid slurry is 0.8 Kelvin. The data points were measured with a probe inside the crucibles using the same batch of melt with two different EEM sizes.

Good luck cooling your 5 to 50 kg of shot weight homogeneously within a tenth of a degree! No control system in the world can achieve that. Because of that, the slurry properties and the part quality vary. No foundry is willing to accept these variations.

Now you know why I only work with the RheoMetal process, which is not slurry temperature dependent. By setting up the EEM relationship once, we can run the slurry consistently for weeks, months, and years.

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