FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
What is the investment casting process?
What is The Foundry of the Future™?
Why choose American Casting Company?
Is ''Rapid Prototyping” available at American Casting?
Can I order finished machined parts?
What type of tooling or pattern equipment is necessary in investment casting?
Is investment casting tooling expensive?
What alloys can be poured as an investment casting?
What size parts can be produced in the investment casting process?
What dimensional tolerance can be expected from investment casting?
What surface finish can be expected from an investment casting?
What is the investment casting process?
The investment casting process refers to a metal casting process where a disposable wax model identical to the casting is produced from an injection molding type of tool. The wax model is then repeatedly dipped into liquid ceramic slurry to form a layered mold. After the ceramic has dried, the disposable wax is burned out leaving a hollow cavity into which the metal is poured. This process is sometimes called the lost wax process.
What is The Foundry of the Future™?
The Foundry of the Future™ refers to a foundry that is constructed on or near your manufacturing plant, is purpose built for your casting needs and demand driven by your requirements. It uses American Casting Company’s demand flow production system and its close proximity to your operation to deliver spectacular benefits to you as follows:
Lowest possible supply chain inventory leading to lower cost and better quality.
Lowest possible purchasing administration costs – can link directly to your production system.
Lead times can be reduced to minutes with effective use of a Kanban type system.
Zero shipping costs.
Immediate quality-related problem solving is possible.
Cost reduction and continuous improvement activities can happen in real time.
Typical lead times in the investment casting industry are six to twelve weeks. However, American Casting Company’s demand flow lines allow it to offer lead times that are an order-of magnitude better than the rest of the industry. Emergency orders from existing tooling can be delivered in 3 working days. American Casting has delivered production quantities of machined and polished castings from newly built tooling in 5 working days. Depending on the casting design, standard lead times at American Casting Company are in the 2 - 4 week range.
The investment casting process offers many unique benefits as follows:
Design Freedom: The investment casting process allows the designer the flexibility of nearly infinite alloy choices, and great flexibility in external and internal configurations. In addition, unlike other casting methods, there are no draft requirements in the investment casting process.
Reduced Machining: Investment castings are produced to close tolerances and near-net size. There is little secondary machining required, thus offering savings in machining time and material costs.
Reduced Fabrication: Thin and thick sections can be cast as one piece, and weldments can be replaced with single piece castings.
Good Mechanical Properties: Investment castings have mechanical properties that are better than any other casting technology.
Superior Aesthetics: Curved and shaped surfaces are easy to produce, integrally cast marking and logos are possible and the surface finish of investment castings is consistently better than 125 RMS
Reproducibility: The investment casting process produces a reliable and consistent product. At American Casting Company, our ISO 9001:2000 based process control system yields remarkable consistency from part to part as well as from batch to batch. This reproducibility feature means our customers will save time in both machine set up and assembly.
Why choose American Casting Company?
American Casting Company has engineered the inventory waste out of the investment casting process to deliver superior value to our customers.
Best Lead Times: Our lead times are measured in days – not weeks.
Low Cost: Little or no in-process inventory yields a very competitive cost structure.
Continuous Quality Improvement: Quality problems are identified and corrected on a daily basis, with no discrepant in-process inventory that must be repaired or submitted for approval.
The Foundry of the Future™ Is Possible: Combining the inherent benefits of our demand flow process with co-location at your facility yields the lowest possible supply chain cost structure.
Is "Rapid Prototyping" available at American Casting Company?
Yes, and it can be easily incorporated into our demand flow system. We can build prototypes from virtually any CAD file format, and typically delivery of "prototype" quantities of castings is 7-8 working days.
Can I order finished machined parts?
Yes! American Casting Company offers precision secondary machining services using a network of local vendors. We also are set up to do limited machining in-house.
What type of tooling or pattern equipment is necessary in investment casting?
Typically, a split negative-cavity aluminum die is manufactured from which the wax models are produced. In addition, ceramic inserts and soluble wax cores are used to achieve desired internal part configuration, depending on the complexity of the casting cavity. Typical tooling life is 50,000 pieces, and this life can be substantially increased through the use of steel inserts in the aluminum die on higher volume programs.
Is investment casting tooling expensive?
Traditionally, investment casting tooling required a significant upfront investment due to the cost of die design and fabrication. That however is no longer true with the advancement of CAD/CAM and machining technologies. The amount of labor required in the design and fabrication of tooling has been drastically reduced through the integration of computer driven technologies.
What alloys can be poured as an investment casting?
American Casting Company offers a wide range of alloys for investment castings. We pour most stainless steels including 17-4, and the 300 and 400 series alloys. In addition, we produce carbon steel, alloy steel and tool steel castings. We also pour cobalt, copper and aluminum based alloys, such as L605, Silicon Bronze and A356 alloys. Our metal supply is closely controlled and in compliance with common industry standards such as ASTM, AMS and MIL specifications
What size parts can be produced in the investment casting process?
There is virtually no limit to the casting size in the investment casting process. At American Casting Company, our demand flow lines are set up to handle parts weighing a few ounces, as well as industrial machinery components weighing up to 30 pounds.
What dimensional tolerance can be expected from investment casting?
Investment casting is capable of producing exceptionally close dimensional tolerances over a wide range of alloys. Depending on the size and complexity of the part, a linear tolerance of +/- .005 inch/inch is standard for investment casting. In general, the smaller the part the tighter the dimensional tolerance can be held.
What surface finish can be expected from investment casting?
Excellent surface finish can be achieved in investment casting. A surface finish of 90 RMS (Root Mean Square) is typical for American Casting Company castings.