Toyota Jidosha Kabushiki Kaisha

Nippon Light Metal Company, Ltd.

Mitsubishi Electric Corporation

Ryouji Abe

Hiroshi Tsutsumi

Takahiro Yamatani

Hiroshi Kawai

Hiroki Okazawa

Yukihiko Kawanori

Kazunobu Nishimiya

Yukio Kuramasu

Mitsuyoshi Sato

A method of automatically counting a number of inclusions by eliminating the effects of shrinkage cavities in the conventional method and securing a high correlation with a value measured by a skilled worker and a casting mold for obtaining a cast sample used for the same are provided. A method of measurement of a number of nonmetallic inclusions comprising capturing an image of a rectangular fracture surface of a cast sample consisting of an aluminum alloy by a CCD camera or other image capturing means, processing the image captured by the image capturing means for color density, digitalizing the processed image by a predetermined threshold value, and counting the number of pixel clusters of a predetermined size or more, the method characterized by detecting the end edges of the short sides of the rectangular fracture surface before the capturing of its image and automatically setting measurement regions of an area of &#xbc; to &#x2154; of the area of the fracture surface at the two ends of the fracture surface. A casting mold for obtaining a cast sample comprised of a top mold having a recess and a bottom mold having a sprue, having a substantially rectangular parallelepiped cavity extending in the melt flow direction in the state where the top mold and the bottom mold are assembled, and provided, at equal intervals at the bottom of the recess of the top mold with a handle, with inverted V-shaped projections extending in a direction vertical to the melt flow direction.

Method of measurement of number of nonmetallic inclusions and casting mold for obtaining cast sample used for same

Growing community of inventors

Shizuoka, Japan

Ryouji Abe