Casting Defects in Sand-Mold Cast Irons—An Illustrated Review with Emphasis on Spheroidal Graphite Cast Irons

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Ref 2 is one the greatest books that have covered the majority of casting defects, reasons and prevention ways. But a new version was published in 2015 Complete Casting Handbook: Metal Casting Processes, Metallurgy, Techniques and Design (ISBN 0081001207, 9780081001202) which I feel could be more relevant to cite.

Section 2.1 Porosity: it would be nice to include “entrained defects” or as Campbell puts it “physically or mechanically introduced porosity” which is basically porosity that does not require dissolved gas to nucleate.

Section 2.1.2 Pinholes, 2.1.3 Blowholes, : Majority of these defects are known to be generated by the improper mould design such as wrong sprue and runner systems. Same goes for chunky, spiky and all graphite related defects.

Overall, it is a really nice and hard work to collect all these information, yet, I am not too satisfied with the review, because it appears as the collection of various information from casting defect atlas books and there is no new input or comment from the existing data in the literature. Particularly to the defects that I criticized above. Also, from the title and abstract, I was expecting to see and read information about the ASTM standards that foundries need to meet, like X-ray, CT analysis, ultrasonic tests, detection ways, limits, criteria etc. How many defects can be present? What is the maximum size of defect level? What is the acceptable max distance between the defects? Those standards and their importance should be discussed. That would make the manuscript more attractive to the readers.

The flow of the liquid in the mould cavity has been proven to be the most important criteria that determines the all sorts of defects that has been reviewed in this paper. I was so sad not to see any comments or discussion about it.

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Reviewer 2 Report

This manuscript  provides a description of casting defects, with details of their origin when well established, and of known remedies. The information is useful to readers. However, the manuscript is slightly longer, especially with a lot of graphs. It is suggested to delete some unnecessary graphs.

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Reviewer 3 Report

Congratulates the authors for producing a comprehensive overview of casting defects, including microstructure errors. I did not find significant errors in the text. Although the work concerns a well-known topic, the reader will find the extensive description and photographic documentation interesting.I will recommend publishing a review. 

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Reviewer 4 Report

The manuscript can be consider as an excellent study of cast irons

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