Investment Casting

Investment casting is one of the oldest metallurgical processes known to exist. From more than 5000 years as an "investment lost wax casting" the historical process used beeswax to form a pattern which was then used to create the different components and products.

Fast forward to today, thousands of years later and the science remains the same. However, the precision investment casting foundries in the world have introduced new innovations such as high-tech waxes, refractory materials development, and the many advances made possible by computers and computer-aided design.

Similar to the results of our ancestors when they did, investment casting offers unmatched accuracy, repeatability and quality - which makes the molding of small and large parts in high quality alloys fantastic alternative to other less precise manufacturing methods.

The investment casting process: an overview

Design

The investment casting process begins with a design. This may be a drawing or part existing prototype.

Mould

The next step is the manufacture of molds. After a drawing, design, or a prototype of a product Investment casting mold injection. This injection molding wax model is then machined by computer aided design and / or computer aided manufacturing. A marriage of ancient science and technology.

Assembly wax pattern

Several molds wax pattern injection are mounted on a shaft or "carrots" to form the entire room.

Coating

In the next part of the process, a ceramic shell or slurry is first applied to the shaft or carrots, coating of the Assembly of the wax into a liquid fine ceramics. While the slurry is still wet, it is covered with very fine sand and then allowed to dry before another mud and sand is applied. This is repeated until there are 6 or more layers of ceramic shell over the whole wax

Wax

Next in the process, the ceramic shells are prepared for mounting to remove the wax from the inside. This is done with an autoclave, where the ceramic shells are placed on a tray and autoclave uses steam to melt the wax into the mold.

Burnout high temperature

After the wax is removed, the ceramic shell are subject to burnout in high temperature for curing the ceramic molds. After this process, they are prepared for preheating and molding.

Metal melting and casting

In this stage of precision investment casting process, the high quality alloys are melted in furnaces lined. This step is absolutely essential to ensure the quality of casting. Also in this part of the process of degassing and alloying are performed to ensure the molten metal properties are optimal for the casting. The metal is then poured into the ceramic mold.

Cooling

After cooling, the casting of metal takes the form of what was once the wax pattern. After the casting cools, the ceramic shell is removed with high pressure water jets, leaving the smelter with a cast metal filled.

Cut Off, grinding and finishing

side doors are then cut with a saw and then removed by grinding. It is followed by machining and deburring hand tools, and finishing resulting i.