What is Investment Casting
Investment casting is a fascinating and unique technology that gives the engineers freedom of design, quality, flexibility, rapidity, cost reduction and precision to their elements, ensuring safety requirements that they must absolutely have. The technology is based on a lost wax core that leaves empty an interspace in a ceramic coverage. Afterward, the metal pours into the mold to give shape to the final part.
The more complex the component is and difficult to achieve with the tooling machine, the more convenient investment casting is.
It should also be considered that this precision casting allows, without particular differences, to melt special steel alloys such as stainless steels and tool steels that are difficult for tooling machines. All copper alloys can also be handled by Forsider, such as bronze and brass.
A little bit more about
Parts can have very complex shapes and they can also be manufactured with all types of steels with high precision and without mechanical workmanships (in particular for high-melting-point alloys).
The weight of the parts supplied can be few grams up to 20 kg maximum.
Often microcasting parts can be ready-to-assembly, immediately after sand-blasting, if particular tolerances are not required, otherwise they must be machined considering the relative machining allowance.
Forsider is available to customers to optimize all the production process:
– engineering of the product
– realizing prototypes
– manufacturing the necessary molds
There are no limits to the applications of investment casting
Roman Empire has widely used Investment casting, for votive statuettes and coins, also for ornaments of clothes, friezes for furniture, pins and various accessories (Piero Angela in 2000 inaugurated an exhibition of archaeological finds, at Forum Sempronii today Fossombrone, this to suggest that there was already a foundry since 200 BC where today Forsider is placed).
Consider also that all the magnificent statues in antiquity, from the Riace Bronzes to Neptune of Bologna, were produced with this technique on copper-based alloys.
Especially during World War II, Americans develop this technology for steel, because this metal cannot be sand-casted (up to 1.600°C): it becomes possible to obtain very complex pieces with relatively tight tolerances, fairly easily and quickly, even with special steels difficult to machine. At the end of the war, the lost wax casting technology spread throughout the world and Italy too in the 1950s with the Marshall Plan. Only in the 90s we see the first independent companies.
In the 2010s, thanks to Additive manufacturing, Investment casting is back in vogue because the combination of the two technologies opens new perspectives launching a new era of manufacturing: the 3D-Microfusion.
Main fields of application of investment casting:
- Automotive and motor industry in general
- Mechanical industry for the manufacturing of pumps, turbines, valves etc.
- Tool-machine industry
- Textile machinery industry
- Automatic machine industry and automation in general
- Agricultural machinery and equipment industry
- Electromechanical industry
- Food machinery industry
- Nautical accessory industry
- Industry of precision mechanical components
- Biomedical instruments and equipment industry
- Areospace industry
Why Italian Investment Casting
Quality and Saving are the real pillars of Made-in-Italy and only the brave choose to produce with a long term view.
All Steel alloys, Special alloy and Superalloys
Copper-based alloys
for Automotive, Oil and Gas, Pneumatic, Furniture, Food and Beverage, Nautical industry.
Summary of the values:
- FREEDOM OF DESIGN
- WIDE CHOICE OF MATERIALS (We work all types of steel and copper alloys, etc.)
- REDUCTION OF PRODUCTION COSTS
- RAPIDITY OF PRODUCTION TIMES
- FLEXIBILITY OF PRODUCTION VOLUMES
- HIGH QUALITY DETAILS AND PRECISION
- MAKE FUNCTIONAL PROTOTYPE (COST EFFECTIVE)
- MAKE OLD SPARE PARTS
In the last decade, with the improvement of 3D printing technologies, Investment casting got the invaluable benefit to be free from the expensive mold for wax, so now is feasible for rapid prototyping of 1 piece, up to a real production in stock of 1.000s, at competitive costs, in a very short time, and with extremely complex geometries. For these reasons we call this new technology 3D-Microfusion.
You could make your steel functional prototype, from the scratch idea, just-in-time at the cost of the real production, with high detail and very precise tolerance. With all these values you could even simply make spare parts for your old machine/car, for which you no longer have stock.
Highlights and Applications
We will upload as soon as possible all the projects developed so far