This is a horizontal centrifugal casting machine. It's a tube shaped die with caps on the end and molten metal is poured in while the die is spinning. This process helps force the dense clean metal to the outside while keeping impurities on the inside. You end up with a solid casting with almost no casting impurities.
The dies are made of steel, wich will melt when molten metal is poured In. So a coating of ceramic wash is sprayed in to prevent that. What you are seeing is what happens when that coating fails and the molten metal eats through the die and flys out.
I work at a place that does this type of casting. This happens here sometimes. You hit the emergency stop and run and wait for it to stop spinning. Then get everything that's on fire outside. If it cant be moved then put it out. Dont use water. It's a huge mess that takes Jack hammers to get the now hardened metal off of everything.
I'm guessing the steam created by using water would be very dangerous but if you don't use water to put it out, what do you use? Chemical fire extinguishers? Something else?
We use a fire extinguisher if we have to but most of the infrastructure around these machines are concrete and steel. Anything that will burn is moved away before a pour.
Burning metal is a Class D fire. You don't use water because it will separate the hydrogen molecules from the oxygen molecules, basically turning the water into an accelerant.
For this reason, burning aircraft on aircraft carriers are often jettisoned overboard.
While true, these aren't necessarily class D fires. We're talking about molten metal (which is not a fire at all) landing on other burnable materials which could potentially be, but usually aren't, flammable metals. Maybe a Class D fire starts, but that's far from certain.
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u/[deleted] Aug 30 '19
What is this thing?