Fading of Inoculation Effect in Grey Cast Iron

The paper deals with the issue of inoculation of cast iron with flake graphite. In this paper, two different inoculants were chosen for the inoculation of cast iron with flake graphite and then compared. The first inoculant was the basic inoculant Alinoc, the second inoculant chosen was SB 5, which contains rare earth metals. One of the factors affecting the resulting quality of the structure and the occurrence of undesirable forms of graphite is the fading of the inoculation effect. This is due to the time delay between the time of inoculation and the casting of the metal. In this work, the graphitization effect as a function of the decay time was investigated for two different inoculants. After inoculation, samples were collected at time intervals for chill test piece, thermal analysis and chemical composition analysis using an optical spectrometer. The cast samples were subsequently subjected to metallographic evaluation of the microstructure and its quantification by image analysis of graphite.