Machine for cleaning castings

Abstract

A machine for automatically blowing debris, such as sand, out of cavities within engine block and similar type castings which have side openings connected to end openings to form internal cavities. The machine has a ferris-wheel-like frame arranged to rotate around a horizontal axis. The frame is divided into a number of horizontally opening compartments, each arranged to receive and hold a single casting. A dirty casting is loaded, horizontally endwise, while the frame is momentarily stationary, into the compartment which is then located in the lowermost position. Thereafter, the frame is rotated until the next compartment is located in the lowermost position, at which point the rotation is stopped so that the clean casting in the now lowermost compartment is horizontally removed endwise and is replaced with the next dirty casting. The stop, followed by the rotation, sequence is repeated so that each casting, within each compartment, is indexably rotated around the axis. During the time that the frame and castings are rotating, high pressure air blowing nozzles, which are located in each compartment, automatically swing into the openings located on the sides of the castings to blow the debris contained therein. The high pressure air blower nozzles swing out of the side openings during the time that the frame rotation is momentarily stopped during the unloading the loading of the castings in the lowermost compartment. During that time low pressure air nozzles, which are fixedly positioned along side of each compartment, except for the lowermost one, direct low pressure air into the openings in the ends of the castings. Thus, the cavities within the castings are repeatedly subjected to alternating high pressure air blasts in one direction and low pressure air blasts in the opposite direction for loosening and blowing sand and the like debris out of the casting cavities.