Crimson and Gold Connection; Russ Rosmait

Welcome to Crimson and Gold Connection, keeping you connected with the people and current events at Pittsburgh State University. You're listening to the Crimson and Gold Connection. I'm Dustin Tribor and with me today is Russ Rosemate. He's a professor and director of the Investment Casting Training Center at the Kansas Technology Center here at Pittsburgh State University. Russ, thank you for joining me today. Thanks for having me. Pit State is hosting the Investment Casting Institute. Tell me about actually investment casting. You have some things here to show me what we can't really show over the air, but we'll talk about that too. Please inform the listeners about investment casting. The investment casting process, and I'm a faculty and engineering technology teaching part of my areas and teaching metal casting. And one of the areas of that is a process called investment casting or the lost wax process. Very, very old process. Use a lot for artwork and has a lot of today very, very large area of industrial manufacturing. So the turbine blade that goes in the jet engine of an aircraft, probably most of an aircraft's engine is the small aerospace components called turbine blades. And you can't see this, but he actually brought in a small turbine blade and this is how little I know about a turbine blade. There would be many of these going around.

Many of these going around in the circle. I said numerous, probably 80 to 90% of an airplane you fly in, the actual engine is about 89% of those component parts. A lot of casting and airplane parts. The other item I brought is as we begin to age and get older, sometimes we're going to need a new knee implant or a hip implant. And in this year's course, there are four people attending who are in that particular business. They make hip implants and knee implants for the medical business. And so this particular one is a knee and then the bottom knee here where that slides on to. So these are two parts that actually connect together and they slide. So this would go in the bottom part, that would be in the top and that's in this new year. And this is very closely to how and actual the bone would look exactly, exactly. And so that's what's replaced in the human body. Okay. What are some of the materials that you can use in investment cash? We will be pouring this week aluminum, but we pour many types of steel, the specialty alloys for hip implants and knee implants or things like cobalt chrome.

So very, very high end metallurgy involved in the process as well. So when we do this particular course, we cover all aspects, all the investment casting, very technical. The course is not designed for someone just to come in off the street. It's really for practitioners in the industry that we cater to. And so you will actually design what will be casted. And then I watched a video, you guys make a mold out of that design. Yeah, initially, so we basically cover in this program all the proper steps in the process of making this particular part. And in the investment casting process, we typically see the results on things that we have on campus, like artwork. So the our new gorilla that is behind the stadium, that is investment cast. The gorilla night song between the student center and Porter, that's a large investment casting.

And the healer in in front of the Bryant health center, that is an investment casting. So you're basically pouring hot metal into the cast. We, we, we started out so that particular piece of artwork started out as wax. It was then carved in wax. And then we surround that wax with ceramic, let that cure, remove the wax and pour the molten metal in. And say something like a knee, the small, how long will that take to dry to cool down? It probably takes to cool down maybe 15, 20 minutes, but you talk about the expense of an aircraft engine. These particular component parts can take, they're literally grown. And so they could take four to five hours. So that's why an engine aircraft engine is multi million dollars because these little parts are very, very expensive. And that's because of the intricate intricate, intricate, internal passageways. They're grown to actually grow as a single crystal.

So we do some pretty complex stuff in that we don't actually grow crystals in the class, but there are a number of people attending who, who are in that particular business. All right, very good. Well, let's talk more about the, the investment casting institute that we were hosting here at Pitt State. The, the investment casting institute, they are the program sponsor. They are a national organization out of New Jersey, Montfield, New Jersey. And they have member companies from around the country and around the world. And they really sponsor the program here. We hosted for them. Their members come and attend the program for eight days. And they are intense on every, very intensive program on every step of the process. So as, as I said, we started out with wax. So the first days will be a wax section. Then we talk about ceramics, which are the ceramics that surround the wax. That'll be the second day. Then we look at casting design. Then we look at how the metal flows into there.

So very technical fluid flow applications of how to fill the particular part. Because you don't like to make scrap. And scrap would cancel. So that's really why they're here. How do I improve my process? So I don't have scrap. So the parts I'm making are sellable and make you as the customer happy. Gotcha. And obviously with people coming from all over the world, they have different points of use, different techniques and you're, you're just expanding your, your information. Exactly. So what we're doing is sometimes there's little things that we do that people don't know, well, why do you do it this way? And why is it, is, is that step before this step? And why do we need to put this connection here? Well, this is all explained. Also is one of the things we look at is understanding the process because in manufacturing, when we have variation in a process, that causes defects. And we try to drive out variation. I like to say that variation is the enemy to manufacturing. And so if we are consistently making things correctly and done right, we make great product. Gotcha. And so that's what the class is for to teach those processes.

Yeah. Do you have any words, wisdom advice for anybody, any student that wants to get into investment casting? Well, a lot of opportunities. This class is mainly industrial practitioners who are already in the field. That's really what it's designed for. It's not generally open to the public. But if you're in our program, so manufacturing and mechanical majors, who are at Pittsburgh State, who are, have met the prerequisites for the class, if there are openings, I have, I have three of my students who are in the class now. We're going to be taking this class. Very good. That's Russ Rosemate, a professor and director of the investment casting training center. And again, talking about the investment casting institute that will be hosted here at Pittsburgh State University this week. So Russ, thank you so much for coming in and this has been the Crimson and Gold connection. Thank you very much. Join us for Crimson and Gold Connection Wednesdays at 850 and Fridays at 350.