The heat-cured core-making process has been applied for over 60 years to produce molds and cores for different types of castings. The following technologies can be classified into the terminology of “heat-cured coremaking process”: croning-, hot-box -, and warm-box process. The latest technology provides good workability of core mixture, good strength properties, dimensional stability, and good knockout performance of the sand cores. Despite all its advantages, the warm-box technology is less widespread in foundries due to the cost of the high quality thermosetting resin and the maintenance cost of the core box. In this study, the influence of the acid hardener content on the hardening characteristics (bending strength), collapsibility, and the benchlife of the warm-box sand cores were investigated. From the results, it can be said, that within the investigated composition range, increasing the acid hardener content will improve the bending strength of the sand cores. The increased acid hardener content results in higher thermal stability at the beginning of the thermal exposure, and smaller residual bending strength after 15 minutes of thermal loading. The acid hardener level has little effect on the benchlife of the warm-box sand cores, although the sand core mixture is very sensitive to the combined effect of the sand temperature and dwelling time.

The removal of inclusions is a major challenge prior to the casting process, as they cause a discontinuity in the cast material, thereby lowering its mechanical properties and have a negative impact on the feeding capability and fluidity of the liquid alloys. In order to achieve adequate melt quality for casting, it is important to clean the melts from inclusions, for which there are numerous methods that can be used. In the course of the presented research, the inclusion removal efficiency of rotary degassing coupled with the addition of different fluxes was investigated. The effects of various cleaning fluxes on the inclusion content and the susceptibility to pore formation were compared by the investigation of K-mold samples and the evaluation of Density Index values at different stages of melt preparation. The chemical composition of the applied fluxes was characterized by X-ray powder diffraction, while the melting temperature of the fluxes was evaluated by derivatographic measurements. It was found that only the solute hydrogen content of the liquid metal could be significantly reduced during the melt treatments, however, better inclusion removal efficiency could be achieved with fluxes that have a low melting temperature.

With the aid of eutectic modification treatment, the precipitation of coarse lamellar eutectic silicon can be suspended during the solidification of aluminum-silicon alloys, thereby the formation of fine-grained, fibrous eutectic Si can be promoted by the addition of small amounts of modifying elements, such as Sr, to the liquid alloy. The effectiveness of this technique is, however, highly dependent on many technological factors, and the degree of modification can be lowered during the various stages of melt preparation due to the oxidation of the Sr-content of the melt. During our research, we investigated the effect of rotary degassing melt treatments coupled with the addition of three different fluxes on the degree of modification of an Al-Si-Mg-Cu casting alloy. It was also studied, that whether additional Sr alloying made before and during the melt treatments can compensate the Sr fading with time. The degree of eutectic modification was characterized by thermal analysis (TA) and the microscopic investigation of TA specimens. It was found, that by using one of the three fluxes, and by adding Sr master alloy rods before the melt treatments, better modification levels could be achieved. It was also found that the measurement of Sr-concentration by optical emission spectroscopy alone cannot be used for controlling the level of eutectic modification.