The article presents the attempt to optimize a gating system to produce cast steel castings. It is based on John Campbell’s theory and presents the original results of computer modelling of typical and optimized gating systems for cast steel castings. The current state-of-the-art in cast steel casting foundry was compared with several proposals of optimization. The aim was to find a compromise between the best, theoretically proven gating system version, and a version that would be affordable in industrial conditions. The results show that it is possible to achieve a uniform and slow pouring process even for heavy castings to preserve their internal quality.

This paper presents the effect of carburizing materials on cast iron solidification and crystallization. The studies consisted of cast iron preparation from steel scrap and different carburizers. For a comparison, pig iron was exclusively used in a solid charge. Crystallization analysis revealed the influence of the carburizer material on the crystallization curves as well as differences in the solidification paths of cast iron prepared with the use of different charge materials. The carburizers’ influence on undercooling during the eutectic crystallization process was analyzed. The lowest undercooling rate was recorded for the melt with pig iron, then for synthetic graphite, natural graphite, anthracite, and petroleum coke (the highest undercooling rate). So a hypothesis was formulated that eutectic cells are created most effectively with the presence of carbon from pig iron (the highest nucleation potential), and then for the graphite materials (crystallographic similarity with the carbon precipitation in the cast iron). The most difficult eutectic crystallization is for anthracite and petroleum coke (higher undercooling is necessary). This knowledge can be crucial when the foundry plant is going to change the solid charge composition replacing the pig iron by steel scrap and the recarburization process.

In this paper are presented the results of researches, obtained during cast iron melting on basis of steel scrap and a carburizer (without pig iron in solid charge). In the process of carburization, there were used the carburizers such as anthracite, natural and synthetic graphite, petroleum and cupola coke, as well as charcoal. The grey cast iron was produced, for which quantitative analysis of graphite precipitations was performed. It was noticed that in case of using anthracite as carburizer, the smaller graphite precipitations were obtained. In authors’ opinion they are consequences of anthracite structure, consisted of fine graphite flakes and phenomenon of charge materials features’ transfer into melted alloys (structure heredity).