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Investment Casting Design for Manufacturability Services
Designing a casting properly for the investment casting process is a critical first step in ensuring the part can be manufactured at the lowest cost with optimal performance. There are several industry standards and guidelines that should be considered during this process. At American Casting Company we know this and offer investment casting Design for Manufacturing (DFM) input to help ensure customer projects are successful. We prefer to get involved early in the design phase to ensure we can steer designers down a path of success. Our experienced foundry engineers are available to offer valuable suggestions for improvements before plans are finalized and manufacturing begins.
To create a seamless investment casting design, communication between designers and foundry engineers is a must. Our foundry engineers are experts at effectively communicating with designers, tool makers and design engineer. We work with the latest CAD and solidification analysis software packages which enables us to modify customer CAD, do analysis and communicate changes quickly and accurately. Our engineers have 35+ years of collective casting experience which enables us to easily detect and eliminate potential problems. Some of the key DFM considerations we can aid in are as follows:
- Determine minimum / maximum wall thickness.
- Identify isolated heavy sections that may be avoided.
- Determine where radii should be added to avoid sharp corners.
- Identify large flat surfaces which may bulge from pressure in mold.
- Look to minimize the number of gates that will be required to produce a sound casting.
- Figure out what the gate witness allowance should be.
- Help choose the correct final blast media for adequate surface texture.
- Identify cast vs. machined features and determine amount of machine stock to add.
- Evaluate the length, width and depth of holes / slots to ensure they can be cast.
- Look into adding ribs and removing mass to minimize part weight.
- Aid in the design and size of cast in part identification including numbers, letters and logos.
- Recommend special post process including Heat Treat, HIP, NDT, Surface Treatments and more.