Determination of Acceptable Quality Limit for Casting of A356 Aluminium Alloy: Supplier’s Quality Index (SQI)
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
referee report
metals-576251-peer-review-v1
Determination of Acceptable Quality Limit for Casting of A356 Aluminium Alloy: Supplier’s 4 Quality Index (SQI)
Eray Erzi, Özen Gürsoy, Çağlar Yüksel and Derya Dispinar
This manuscript reports on a new quality index for casting of A356 Aluminium alloy. This topic is well suited for metals.
The manuscript is well organized, but the English requires improvement, preferable checked by a native speaker (grammar,
and several quite misleading sentences).
Furthermore, there are several points which require attention:
# Please use the abbreviation wt.-% for weight percent.
# General comment: When citing an author in the text, please use "et al." when the paper is authored by more than two authors,
and give both author' names when citing a paper written by two authors.
# Why is et al. used in the reference list? Metals does not have a page limit.
# There should always be a space between a physical quantity and its unit. Please check the entire text and graphs.
# Please define abbreviations on their first occurence in the text.
# abstract: what is meant by %0.3 Mg? Weight percent, mass percent, content?
# abstract, line 22: sentence!
# abstract: Please define bifilm.
# Table 1: Please mention "source" also in the table. I assume that "Rem" stands here for remainder... Please define.
# line 135: provider D // source D? Is this the same?
# Fig. 1: Please give the unit of the data shown.
# Fig. 2(b): Please give the unit of the data shown.
# Fig. 7: Provide reasonably large scale bars for the images shown.
Furthermore, it would be useful to have one figure showing the microstructures of all four sample sources for comparison.
Overall, the manuscript is suitable for publication in this Special Issue, provided that the points listed above are treated
well.
Author Response
This manuscript reports on a new quality index for casting of A356 Aluminium alloy. This topic is well suited for metals.
The manuscript is well organized, but the English requires improvement, preferable checked by a native speaker (grammar,
and several quite misleading sentences).
Level of English has been improved
Furthermore, there are several points which require attention:
# Please use the abbreviation wt.-% for weight percent.
All corrected.
# General comment: When citing an author in the text, please use "et al." when the paper is authored by more than two authors,
and give both author' names when citing a paper written by two authors.
Corrected
# Why is et al. used in the reference list? Metals does not have a page limit.
Corrected.
# There should always be a space between a physical quantity and its unit. Please check the entire text and graphs.
Corrected.
# Please define abbreviations on their first occurence in the text.
Corrected.
# abstract: what is meant by %0.3 Mg? Weight percent, mass percent, content?
Corrected.
# abstract, line 22: sentence!
Corrected.
# abstract: Please define bifilm.
Corrected.
# Table 1: Please mention "source" also in the table. I assume that "Rem" stands here for remainder... Please define.
Corrected.
# line 135: provider D // source D? Is this the same?
They are the same, but it has been corrected as Source D.
# Fig. 1: Please give the unit of the data shown.
Corrected.
# Fig. 2(b): Please give the unit of the data shown.
Corrected.
# Fig. 7: Provide reasonably large scale bars for the images shown.
Corrected.
Furthermore, it would be useful to have one figure showing the microstructures of all four sample sources for comparison.
Overall, the manuscript is suitable for publication in this Special Issue, provided that the points listed above are treated
well.
Reviewer 2 Report
The authors did good work however the manuscript can't be accepted in its present form due to the following major comments:
The main objective is not clear with specific vision to signify the new point/s in this work. I mean, what is the new or the most significant points in this work relating to hundreds of papers published in this field. The authors have to discuss starting point of this work, from where they start and why? Alloys, its main application relating to this work Why you have selected such classic alloys and classic production technique used in this work. So what is the new? More details concerning the methodology should be added into this section. Casting technique, tensile testing, SEM microscopy and samples preparation. Also, the authors should add some texts Indicating why they select such techniques and parameters. The section of discussion is missed and may be included in the results section. So, it is not clear enough. Most of mentioned discussions are speculative and more descriptive. More discussions of results should be added and be scientifically in deep into this section. The authors should rewrite this important part carefully. SEM micrographs missed the EDX that prove the compositions of phases, oxides indicated. For example, how the readers confirm the iron intermetallics mentioned in this Figure. The conclusions should be rewritten carefully indicating the most new points that may be drawn from this study and add to literature.Author Response
Aluminum wheel production was about 300 million units in 2015. The global Al wheel market is valued at 193.000 million USD in 2017 and it will reach 212.000 million USD in 2025. Therefore, A356 alloy is still the only choice of material for such purposes.
I agree with the reviewer, there are a lot of articles in the literature. However, it is still the most popular alloy and there are a lot to solve about the casting process. As it has been described in the abstract of the article, way too many parameters are controlled during the casting of wheels, yet, there are still rejection parts. Noone in the literature has focused on the quality of the provider. Therefore, for the first time in the literature, we introduced “Supplier Quality Index” that included many parameters, mainly, the novel “bifilm index”.
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
The authors didn't change or modify their manuscript. They didn't answer the comments properly to accept their work. The manuscript can't be accepted in its present form due to major modifications.
Author Response
The main objective is not clear with specific vision to signify the new point/s in this work.
The objective of this work is to concentrate on the first rule of Prof. Campbell’s 10 Rules of casting which is “start with good quality melt”. This has been signified in the abstract as:
“Yet, regardless of the precautions, there could still be rejected parts. It is realized that a good quality raw material is one of the most underrated point of the industry and the starting material has a great effect on the final product and it shall be taken in to account more seriously. Therefore, in this study, the supply chain for a cast a wheel manufacturer was investigated.”
Now the abstract is revised as:
“Yet, regardless of the precautions, there could still be rejected parts. It is realized that a good quality raw material is one of the most underrated point of the industry and the starting material has a great effect on the final product and it shall be taken in to account more seriously. Therefore, regarding the first rule of Campbell’s 10 Rules of Casting, in this study, the quality of the starting material of supply chains for wheel manufacturer was investigated.”
I mean, what is the new or the most significant points in this work relating to hundreds of papers published in this field.
Relating to the hundreds of papers published in this field; none of them ever focused on the assessment of the quality of the starting material. In our case, we have investigated the quality of the 4 different ingot providers. In most of the papers published in this field, a standard degassing is carried out; hydrogen level is measured and porosity measurements are made in the cast part. None of them concentrated on the bifilm concept. None of them measured bifilm index. None of them correlated the ingot quality, bifilm content with the rejected parts.
A discussion is added to the end of introduction regarding the importance of the work and its difference from the other publications.
«Many of the researches have focused on the cleanliness of the melt and the efficiency of degassing mainly due to the dissolved hydrogen. However, the quantification of the bifilm content of the melts were disregarded.»
The authors have to discuss starting point of this work, from where they start and why? Alloys, its main application relating to this work Why you have selected such classic alloys and classic production technique used in this work.
Aluminum wheel production was about 300 million units in 2015. The global Al wheel market is valued at 193.000 million USD in 2017 and it will reach 212.000 million USD in 2025. Therefore, A356 alloy is still the only choice of material for such purposes.
I agree with the reviewer, there are a lot of articles in the literature. However, it is still the most popular alloy and there are a lot to solve about the casting process. As it has been described in the abstract of the article, way too many parameters are controlled during the casting of wheels, yet, there are still rejection parts. Noone in the literature has focused on the quality of the provider. Therefore, for the first time in the literature, we introduced “Supplier Quality Index” that included many parameters, mainly, the novel “bifilm index”.
There is no publication in the literature about the correlation between melt quality and rejected number of wheels produced. The “classic production technique” is still the only widely used technique for the production of wheels worldwide with A356 alloy.
So what is the new? More details concerning the methodology should be added into this section. Casting technique, tensile testing, SEM microscopy and samples preparation. Also, the authors should add some texts Indicating why they select such techniques and parameters. The section of discussion is missed and may be included in the results section. So, it is not clear enough.
The explanation of why these methods are chosen is added to the text.
Most of mentioned discussions are speculative and more descriptive. More discussions of results should be added and be scientifically in deep into this section. The authors should rewrite this important part carefully. SEM micrographs missed the EDX that prove the compositions of phases, oxides indicated. For example, how the readers confirm the iron intermetallics mentioned in this Figure. The conclusions should be rewritten carefully indicating the most new points that may be drawn from this study and add to literature.
EDX is added to the figure.
New discussion is added to text under “results and discussion”.
Conclusion is revised.
Round 3
Reviewer 2 Report
The authors did the required modifications. The manuscript can be accepted in its present form.
