The article discusses the weldment to casting conversion process of rocker arm designed for operation in a special purpose vehicle to obtain a consistency of objective functions, which assume the reduced weight of component, the reduced maximum effort of material under the impact of service loads achieved through topology modification for optimum strength distribution in the sensitive areas, and the development of rocker arm manufacturing technology. As a result of conducted studies, the unit weight of the item was reduced by 25%, and the stress limit values were reduced to a level guaranteeing safe application.
A new Computer-Aided Design approach is introduced for design of steel castings taking into account the feeding ability in sand moulds. This approach uses the geometrical modeling by a CAD-program, in which the modul “Castdesigner” is implemented, which includes the feeding models of steel castings. Furthermore, the feeding ability is guaranteed immediately during the design by an interactive geometry change of the casting cross section, so that a directional feeding of the solidifying casting from the installed risers is assured.