Over the past 60 years after the foundation of the People’s Republic of China, casting has enjoyed vigorous development as the foundation of equipment manufacturing industry. Since 2000, China has ranked the first place in the world successively for the output of castings, but has ever depended on import and been restricted by foreign countries for long term in terms of high-end casting technology, advanced casting equipment, especially high-end, large-scale and key castings. The Planning for Adjustment and Development of Equipment Manufacturing Industry, promulgated by the State Council in 2009, has raised “consolidating the casting of fundamental parts” to the strategic height same as that of mainframe products for the first time. With the guiding and support of the government, our casting workers have united together, put forth effort to make innovations, and made leap-forward progresses in terms of large-scale, light-weight, functionalized, and good-quality production of castings. At present, more than 100 enterprises in China have the ability to manufacture large-scale castings of more than 30t individually; and the high-end castings independently researched & developed and manufactured, including large-scale water turbines, steam turbines and gas turbines, cylinder blocks and cylinder covers of wind power and large-scale generators, etc., have reached international advanced level in terms of quality. In addition, the newly revised Cast Iron Pipes and Fittings with Flexible Joint for Water Drainage (GB/T12772—1999) adds the no-faucet hoop-type straight pipes and pipe fittings which are all-purpose internationally. In Europe and America, cast iron pipe with flexible joint is a main tubular product of drain line, and wherein, the most popular is W-shaped no-faucet hoop-type pipe. Compared with the drain pipe and joint in common use at present, W-shaped no-faucet flexible cast iron drain pipe is unique in terms of structure, performance, installation and construction, etc. Current state of the joint of cast iron drain pipe at home: At present, domestic cast iron drain pipe has multiple forms of flexible and anti-seismic joints: ① RK adapting gland type flexible joint; ② RP plain-ended flange type flexible joint; ③ STL plain-ended sleeve type flexible joint; and ④ZPR adapting flexible joint for extension tubes.
Meanwhile, we shall notice that, compared with the enterprises in developed countries, our enterprises still have a relatively big distance in terms of the quality of castings. In order to meet the demand of national economic development, shorten the distance from developed countries, and hold a dominant place in market, we must strengthen enterprises’ personnel management, improve production equipment, thus raise the quality of castings. “Quality is the life of an enterprise”, and our casting industry must participate in the international competition with foreign enterprises with good-quality products as the weapon, so as to win the competition. Therefore, our casting industry must take “raising the quality of products” as the most important task, treat it as a great event concerned with enterprises’ development, improve the quality of castings from different angles, consolidate the root for the development of casting industry, and lay a foundation for the development of casting industry.