Advantages Investment Casting

The major advantages of investment casting are extreme versatility, cost effectiveness and the precise dimension control it offers. It saves time and labor and ensures error-free, accurate dimensional parts, giving designers and engineers more flexibility.

The versatility is the major advantage of investment casting. It supports the production of a wide range of products, for a variety of industries. The fabrication of some designs can be difficult or impossible with other metal casting methods. Investment casting allows the production of thin-wall, finely detailed parts, with extreme precision control. It also allows the production of quality parts that are both ultra light and strong, with extremely accurate details. This technique avoids the necessity of welding and joining together different parts.

Investment casting can be used with a wide variety of metals and alloys. This gives designers and engineers the freedom to concentrate on functional aspect of the casting rather than on its production. This is also a major advantage of investment casting. Continue...

Steel Investment Castings

The steel investment castings process is well suited for a wide variety of applications from manufacturing small parts and tools to supplying the needs of the nuclear energy, defense and aerospace industries.

There is practically no limit to the complexity of product designs that can be handled by steel investment castings.

Steel is widely accepted as an excellent choice for products and parts that need to withstand a great deal of wear and stress or that need to support heavy loads. Steel is stronger than any other cast metal which makes it very valuable in some industries. Continue...

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Rapid Prototyping

The third type of rapid prototyping used at Shelmet Precision Casting, Inc. is stereolithography. Stereolithography is a technology commonly used to produce parts containing a good finish and a high degree of accuracy.

Stereolithography uses a liquid resin and laser to build a prototype layer by layer. By scanning the CAD design, cross sections of the design are built of a liquid photopolymer resin layer by layer, resulting in an extremely accurate prototype.

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Rapid Prototyping - Part 2

The second type of rapid prototyping employed at Shelmet Precision Casting, Inc is molds made with epoxy or silicon.

Made by using pourable epoxies or silicon rubbers, these molds are designed for tooling and offer a high degree of accuracy.

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Rapid Prototyping - Machining Wax

There are three different methods of rapid prototyping used at Shelmet Precision Casting, Inc. These methods allow small quantity productions to be completed featuring actual cast parts, which can be shipped in a week or two.

The first method of rapid prototyping uses a very hard machining wax. This wax is specifically designed for proofing and CNC programs, as well as for building models, prototypes and patterns. Machining wax is easier to machine than plastic or metals, yet maintains the highest quality of finish. Dimensional accuracy and surface details are also maintained with the use of machining wax in rapid prototyping.

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Non Destructive Testing, Part 3

Fluorescent Penetrant Testing

The most commonly-used of non-destructive testing methods is the liquid penetrant testing. A dye solution that is either visible or fluorescent is used to coat the casting part being tested. Any excess is blotted from the part before a developing agent is applied.

The developer pulls out any penetrant that has seeped into the part through imperfections that reach the surface of the part. An ultraviolet light causes the seepage to glow, revealing the areas of imperfection.

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Non Destructive Testing, Part 2

Magnetic Particle Inspection

To find flaws on the surface or just below the surface, magnetic particle inspection is used. This type of inspection can only be used on iron-based, ferromagnetic metals, such as iron, steel, cobalt and nickel. Ferromagnetic alloys used in the casting must contain enough of the magnetizeable material for this type of inspection to be effective.

Flux, or magnetic lines of force, gets distorted when it attempts to pass thru a flaw. Thus this “flux leakage” follows the application of infinitesimal particles of iron to the part of the casting that is being examined. There might be some differences in the application of the magnetic field, but the principle of magnetic particle inspection is the same for all applications.

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