Development of Water-Soluble Composite Salt Sand Cores Made by a Hot-Pressed Sintering Process

A wide variety of water-soluble cores are widely used in hollow composite castings with internal cavities, curved channels, and undercuts. Among them, the cores made by adding binders of inorganic salts in the form of aqueous solutions have excellent solubility in water. However, excellent collapsibility is often accompanied by poor moisture absorption resistance. In this study, a water-soluble core with moderate strength and moisture absorption resistance was prepared by hot pressing and sintering the core sand mixture of sand, bentonite, and composite salts, and a tee tube specimen was cast. The experimental results showed that the cores with KCl-K2CO3 as binder could obtain strength of more than 0.9 MPa and still maintain 0.3 MPa at 80±5% relative humidity for 6 hours; the subsequent sintering process can significantly improve the resistance to moisture absorption of the hot pressed cores (0.6 MPa after 24 hours of storage at 85±5% relative humidity); the water-soluble core prepared by the post-treatment can be used to cast tee pipe castings with a smooth inner surface and no porosity defects, and it is easy to remove the core.