Investment Casting Materials

As one of the most popular metalworking process, investment casting could be used to produce a variety of precision components in many materials. Below are the common investment casting materials used in FHND foundry:

Cast Steel

Cast steel usually refers to normal carbon steel, alloy steel and stainless steel. It is the investment casting material used to make steel castings with carbon content lower than 2%.

Common cast steel grades:

Cast steel has the metallurgy manufacturing flexibility and strongest variability. One can choose a different chemical composition and control that is adapted to the various requirements of different projects. This offers different heat treatment choices in the larger context of the mechanical properties and performance. Also offering good weld-ability and workability. The most obvious advantage of cast steel is the design flexibility. The designer of investment casting has the greatest freedom of design choices. This allows for complex shapes and hollow cross-section parts.

The Advantage and Disadvantage of Cast Steel

Cast steel is a kind of isotropic material and can be made into the overall structural strength steel castings. This improves the reliability of the project. Coupled with the design and weight, the advantages of short delivery time, price and economy gives cast steel a competitive advantage.

The weight range of steel castings is larger. In our investment casting foundry, we can make steel castings in investment casting from only a few dozen grams to 50 kilograms.

Steel castings can be used for a variety of working conditions. Its mechanical properties are superior to any other casting alloys, and a variety of high-alloy steel for special purposes. To withstand high tensile stress or dynamic load of components, it is important to consider pressure vessel castings. In low or high temperature, large and important part load key parts should give priority to steel castings.

However, cast steel has comparatively bad shake-suction, wear resistance and mobility. The casting performance, compared to cast iron, is bad. Also, the costs are higher than normal cast iron.

Cast Iron

Cast iron usually refers to gray iron and ductile iron. Such kind of investment casting material can be used to produce iron castings with carbon content higher than 2%.

Common gray iron grades: HT150, HT200, HT250, HT300, HT350.

Common ductile iron grades: QT400-15, QT400-18, QT450-10, QT500-7, QT600-9.

The ductile iron has high strength, ductility and heat-resistance and toughness. So a wider application, in some cases, can replace the carbon steel. However, its production technology is high. The production process is more complex. This makes the production cost higher than normal grey cast iron and cast steel. Therefore, there are more investment casting defects for ductile iron. There are many fields that use ductile iron, such as pressure pipes and fittings, automotive applications, agriculture, road and construction applications and general engineering applications.The grey cast iron’s good casting properties are: good vibration damping, good wear resistance, good machinability and low notch sensitivity. However, its tensile strength and elongation are very low. So, it can only produce some metal investment castings with low physical requirements. Requirements such as protective cover, cover, oil pan, hand wheels, frame, floor, hammer, small handle, base, frame, box, knife, bed, bearing seat, table, wheels, cover, pump, valve, pipe, flywheel, motor blocks etc. As for the higher grades, grey cast iron can withstand greater load and a certain degree of tightness or corrosion resistance. This allows for some of the more important castings such as cylinder, gear, base, flywheels, bed, cylinder block, cylinder liner, piston, gear box, brake wheel, coupling plate, medium pressure valve, etc.

Cast Aluminum

Common cast aluminum grades: ADC-12, A356, A380, ZL104.

In addition to cookware and furniture, this type of investment casting material is also used to create a number of motor parts for land vehicles and boats. Components such as connecting rods, pistons, housings, radiator tanks, and other essentials can be created using both die casting and mold casting methods. Even components such as compressors and various types of gears may be created using aluminum of this type.

Cast aluminum is a specific metal that has gone through one of the several processes known as casting. Essentially, it is created when methods such as die casting, mold casting, or sand casting are used to temper the aluminum for use in creating components for many different types of products. This form of aluminum is used for a number of items around the house, as well as machinery and other products that are necessary to the manufacturing of a wide range of goods and services.

One of the main advantages to using cast aluminum is that the metal is often cost efficient in comparison to other investment casting materials. The metal also retains a high degree of durability. While it is not necessarily true that it will last as long as cast iron in some applications, aluminum products do tend to hold up well for a number of years. The combination of lower cost and reliable durability makes the metal an excellent choice for many aluminum castings used in domestic and commercial applications.