Back in the day, we always rammed our greensand molds with a hand rammer. Last week I tried using the new pneumatic rammer on a simple cope and drag for a gear blank, and the mold was way too hard. The casting came out with a massive swell. I guess the old way had a feel to it that the machine just doesn't get yet. Anyone run into this with the new gear? | Foundry Workers - The Design Community Hub
Back in the day, we always rammed our greensand molds with a hand rammer. Last week I tried using the new pneumatic rammer on a simple cope and drag for a gear blank, and the mold was way too hard. The casting came out with a massive swell. I guess the old way had a feel to it that the machine just doesn't get yet. Anyone run into this with the new gear?
Honestly, riley_singh might be onto something with the air pressure, but I've seen the opposite. Sometimes that machine rammer just packs the sand more evenly than a tired guy at the end of a shift ever could. Your hand rammer technique probably varied a lot more than you remember, leading to softer spots that hid problems. The new tool showed a flaw in your pattern or your gating that the old "feel" method was accidentally forgiving.