Investment Castings in Our Everyday Lives
Investment Castings are used in nearly every industry and every aspect of our lives from food processing to oil & gas, water treatment, automotive, aerospace, construction, steel, transportation and more.
Most of the food you purchase has been processed by machinery with investment cast parts. When traveling, your airplane or car contains many investment cast parts. The truck hauling oil, gas or any other item will contain parts that have been investment cast.
If you’ve been to a doctor you have likely seen surgical tools which were investment cast. You may even have an investment cast artificial bone. If you go to the dentist, you probably carry an investment casting in your mouth. If you play golf, your clubs could be investment cast. Everywhere is somehow touched by investment casting.
While investment casting has many modern uses, the basic process has been used for more than 6,000 years to produce sculptures, jewelry and ornaments, but the development of investment casting as a production method began roughly in the middle of the 20th century. The industry has grown steadily since that time and today enjoys annual sales in the United States alone of more than $3 billion.
For example, Franklin Precision Castings manufactures survey markers for the transportation industry. This product is investment cast from silicon bronze, known for its corrosion resistant properties and easy to see color. According to Senior Investment Cast Engineer, Neil Kruse, “These markers are used as reference points for land surveys and photogrammetry (or 3D scanning) for the development of landscapes. Often times, the markers have numerical identifiers that are logged in a database to record their coordinates for easy reference because they are left out in the environment.”
Compared to other metal forming processes, investment casting is the only process to produce parts that are usable as is or net cast, without expensive and time-consuming machining, welding and multiple assembly. Investment casting saves time, money and materials.
Investment cast parts are designed to minimize the cost of producing close tolerance for finer finish parts. Machining is frequently eliminated. Multiple part assembly can also be eliminated because investment casting combines the best of several manufacturing processes.
Investment castings are available in a variety of alloys, offer design flexibility due to near net-shape with intricate designs and tight tolerances for an accurate cast part.
Let us evaluate your part to determine if the investment cast process is best for your application. Contact us today!