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The most beautiful foundry in the world – and our proud part in it

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Sakthi Portugal’s SP21 foundry in Águeda opened its doors in February and we are proud to have played our humble part in this ambitious project, which has resulted in one of the most impressive foundry buildings in the world and a state-of-the-art facility with a total annual capacity of 80,000 tonnes.

Our sister company DISA designed and delivered the foundry line for SP21 as a turnkey project (read more here) – including a Wheelabrator CT shot blast machine as part of a new, more efficient finishing operation.

The CT range offers continuous, automated and flexible blast-cleaning of tumble-proof parts, such as castings and forgings, and is ideally suited to integrated, high-volume production and mixed product runs - which is why CTs are frequently specified by DISA as part of complete, integrated foundry production lines, enabling continuous workpiece flow from liquid metal to cleaned part.

At the new SP21 foundry, a CT-4-55/9-430 blast cleaning machine with four powerful U70 blast wheels (55kW each) is now desanding the complete casting output, continuously and in line, achieving throughputs of 12-14t of automotive castings (various housings, cases and covers) per hour. It’s the third CT blast cleaning machine from Wheelabrator at Sakthi Portugal.

The CT blast machine offers efficient cleaning operations with minimal space and storage requirements, short transport distances, and little or no need for manual handling of parts. At SP21, this means the machine can connect the moulding line directly with the customer bin, via a final quality control area.

Gianluigi Parravicini from Wheelabrator explains: “We are proud to have been a part of this astonishing foundry project. Sakthi SP21 is not only technically ambitious, it’s a beautiful building and an example of modern foundry operations. Our CT machines have been a reliable and efficient fixture in foundries around the world for decades and we will continue to develop this highly successful machine concept for the foundry of the future. Sakthi Portugal has just given us a glimpse at what that future may look like.”

Step inside the new SP21 foundry in this short video (courtesy of Foundry Planet & Sakthi Portugal) or visit the dedicated CT range web page for more information about the Wheelabrator CT range.