The percent Moisture Content (MC) and Percent Volatile Organic Compounds (VOC) and Loss-on-Ignition (LOI) are standardized testing procedures for the American Foundry Society (AFS). Excess water vapor, gaseous organic solvents, and total organics in foundry sand affects the level of gas porosity in metal casting. The current AFS standards are... more

The percent Moisture Content (MC) and Percent Volatile Organic Compounds (VOC) and Loss-on-Ignition (LOI) are standardized testing procedures for the American Foundry Society (AFS). Excess water vapor, gaseous organic solvents, and total organics in foundry sand affects the level of gas porosity in metal casting. The current AFS standards are time consuming and are not in line with Foundry 4.0 in addressing casting quality issues. Furthermore, the existing AFS procedures require considerable time to complete these manual tests independently (Ramrattan & Kishi, Automated LOI Testing, 2023).
Research is being conducted at Western Michigan University (WMU) to explore more agile and automated methodologies to achieve digital metrics for MC, VOC, and LOI. WMU researchers discovered that the foundry green sand couples with infrared radiant energy to allow better heat transfer (Ramrattan & Binoniemi, Loss on Ignition Using IR, 2015). This fact is being used by a WMU Electrical Engineering Senior Project Team to develop equipment to measure MC and VOC sequentially. less