Product Introduction

Advantages and disadvantages of fusion casting

Advantages of investment casting include:

1 Extremely complex parts can be formed

As a metal forming process, investment casting can form extremely complex parts. Compared with die casting, sand casting, lost casting and other processes, investment casting can allow the highest part complexity.Date stamps, text and internal spine can be molded.Reverse buckle can be formed.Complex pipes can be formed.

Using this feature, investment casting can be used to combine the parts originally processed by other processes into one part, thereby simplifying the product structure, removing the assembly process, and achieving the purpose of cost reduction.

On the other hand, investment casting provides a great deal of design freedom, and extremely complex parts can be molded by investment casting.

▲Example of investment casting complex parts

2 Good appearance quality

Investment castings have good appearance quality, low surface roughness, and surface roughness up to Ra3.2um.

In general, the surface roughness of milled metal is Ra3.2. In other words, the appearance quality of investment castings is similar to that of milling.

The advantage of this is that in some cases, investment casting can remove secondary machining processes or surface treatment processes such as painting.

▲Aircraft parts with a high quality appearance

3 High dimensional accuracy

Compared with other casting processes, the dimensional accuracy of investment castings is higher.

▲Linear dimensional tolerance for investment casting

Of course, due to the complexity of the investment casting process, there are many factors affecting the dimensional accuracy of the casting, such as the shrinkage of the mold, the deformation of the investment mold, the linear change of the mold shell during the heating and cooling process, the shrinkage rate of the alloy and the deformation of the casting during the solidification process, so the dimensional accuracy of ordinary investment castings is relatively high. However, its consistency still needs to be improved (the size consistency of castings using medium and high temperature wax materials should be improved a lot)

4 Materials are not restricted

There is no limit to the metal materials that can be investment cast, including carbon steel, alloy steel, heat-resistant alloy, stainless steel, precision alloy, permanent magnet alloy, bearing alloy, copper alloy, aluminum alloy, titanium alloy and ductile iron.

▲Titanium alloy investment casting

Disadvantages of investment casting include

● The biggest disadvantage of investment casting is that the cost is relatively high, because the process is complicated, the production cycle is long, and the cost of wax mold, paint, refractory sand, etc. Therefore, investment casting is more suitable for high-volume products, and the use of 3D printing to manufacture wax molds can be considered in small batches.

● The simple part process is replaced by investment casting, and the cost will be higher. If investment casting is used to reduce costs, it is necessary to consider combining multiple parts, removing machining, etc.

● Casting size should not be too large. The maximum weight of the casting can be 1000Kg, which is difficult to exceed the weight of the casting.

There are too many factors affecting the quality of investment casting, and the process quality control is difficult.

Zhongwei Precision has the following services

Detection Systems

Copper Silica Sol Investment Casting

We are the manufacturer of "FGE50-7 Ductile iron castings", if you need more information please contact us!