Machined Investment Castings

Investment castings are known for their high quality, intricate details, intricate shapes, precise dimensions and smooth surfaces. But did you know that investment castings typically require less machining and other post-casting treatments than traditional castings or manufactured parts? This makes machined investment castings ideal for design engineers looking for high strength and lightweight components while reducing lead time, waste and energy costs.

Benefits of Machined Investment Castings

When manufacturing high-quality metal parts, machined investment castings can provide a high return on your investment! The investment casting or lost wax process, used for thousands of years, is now the future of manufacturing. Here are just some of the benefits:

Reduce waste and costs: With the ever-increasing cost of metals or alloys, it can be expensive to manufacture parts from metal bars, especially if extensive machining is required. Converting manufacturing to investment casting eliminates scrap metal, resulting in significant alloy cost savings. Given the current metal shortage, investment casting may be the only way to make parts economically. Today's competitive labor market also creates soaring costs and production challenges.

Design flexibility: As opposed to forming parts from metal bar, machined investment castings can be used to convert multi-piece manufacturing to one-piece castings, dramatically reducing lead time, waste, and cost. In addition, machined investment castings are available in a variety of metals, including low-cost alloys such as carbon and tool steel or expensive alloys such as aluminum, stainless steel, Hastelloy, cobalt, and Inconel.

Complex Shapes/Thin Walls: Also known as "precision casting," the investment casting process produces parts with complex shapes, excellent surface finish, and tight dimensional accuracy.

Environmentally friendly: Investment casting is a completely environmentally friendly process. Metals and waxes used in manufacturing are recycled and reused to make new parts. Although the ceramic shell material cannot be recycled in the investment casting process, it is classified as an inert substance and no controlled landfill disposal is necessary. Waste from ceramic slurries can also be recycled for many uses, including filling for construction projects or filling for concrete.