Such defects can be caused by air entrained in the melt, steam or smoke from the casting sand, or other gasses from the melt or mould. (Vacuum holes caused by metal shrinkage (see above) may also be loosely referred to as blowholes). Proper foundry practices, including melt preparation and mould design, can reduce the occurrence of these defects. Because they are often surrounded by a skin of sound metal, blowholes may be difficult to detect, requiring harmonic, ultrasonic, magnetic, or X-ray (e.g., industrial CT scanning) analysis. Pouring metal defects
Pouring metal defects include misruns, cold shuts, and inclusions. A misrun occurs when the liquid metal does not completely fill the mould cavity, leaving an unfilled portion. Cold shuts occur when two fronts of liquid metal do not fuse properly in the mould cavity, leaving a weak spot. Both are caused by either a lack of fluidity in the molten metal or cross-sections that are too narrow. The fluidity can be increased by changing the chemical composition of the metal or by increasing the pouring temperature. Another possible cause is back pressure from improperly vented mould cavities.Misruns and cold shuts are closely related and both involve the material freezing before it completely fills the mould cavity. These types of defects are serious because the area surrounding the defect is significantly weaker than intended. The castability and viscosity of the material can be important factors with these problems.
Pipes form at the surface of the casting and burrow into the casting, while caved surfaces are shallow cavities that form across the surface of the casting.Closed shrinkage defects, also known as shrinkage porosity, are defects that form within the casting. Isolated pools of liquid form inside solidified metal, which are called hot spots. The shrinkage defect usually forms at the top of the hot spots. They require a nucleation point, so impurities and dissolved gas can induce closed shrinkage defects. The defects are broken up into macroporosity and microporosity (or micro shrinkage), where macroporosity can be seen by the naked eye and microporosity cannot. Gas porosity
Gas porosity is the formation of bubbles within the casting after it has cooled. This occurs because most liquid materials can hold a large amount of dissolved gas, but the solid form of the same material cannot, so the gas forms bubbles within the material as it cools. Gas porosity may present itself on the surface of the casting as porosity or the pore may be trapped inside the metal, which reduces strength in that vicinity. Nitrogen, oxygen and hydrogen are the most encountered gases in cases of gas porosity. In aluminium castings, hydrogen is the only gas that dissolves in significant quantity, which can result in hydrogen gas porosity. For casting that are a few kilograms in weight the pores are usually 0.01 to 0.5 mm (0.00039 to 0.01969 in) in size.