Where Does the Wax Go When it Gets “Lost?”

One of the parts of the investment casting process that I initially found hard to understand was the process of removing the wax patterns and runner from the ceramic shell once it hardens. If you scour the Internet’s offerings on the lost wax casting process, if you find anything at all, it might not always be clear how the whole investment casting process works, let alone how each stage in the process is executed. This can be the Continue reading

Why Investment Casting Companies Choose Investment Casting

Investment casting companies make products for clients from a variety of sectors in the economy. They can make investment cast products for the automotive industry, sporting goods companies and even the hardware products industry. Why do companies choose investment casting over other kinds of metalworking and forming processes? Let’s do a few side-by-side comparisons between Continue reading

How Investment Castings are Made

Ferralloy Investment Casting

Investment casting image courtesy of Ferralloy, Inc.

A wide range of parts can be created by the investment casting process. Industrial products, commercial products and even consumer products are regularly produced by investment casting operations. Typically, investment casting is used for the creation of products with complex profiles in comparatively limited quantities. This can make investment casting somewhat more Continue reading

Advancements in the Creation of Investment Casting Products

Rimer Inc Investment Casting

Investment casting image courtesy of Rimer Enterprises, Inc.

Investment casting can be used to create products with very complex tolerances. It is a precise process, but it is also complicated and time-consuming. Complication and time-intensiveness are two features that can make a process unattractive to industrial operations and their clients. One of the most highly complicating factors in the investment casting process is that the layering of ceramic materials and sand around wax patterns can take days or even weeks because of Continue reading

The Brilliance of Lost Wax Casting

JDH Pacific Investment Castings

Investment castings image courtesy of JDH Pacific.

Investment casting really is a brilliant process. The history of the practice dates back many centuries, and it has continued to perform well as a casting method ever since. There are many reasons why investment casting has persevered for such a long time, but the principal reason is this: investment casting works. The process has come to be known by several names besides investment casting, but the most meaningful and widely-used alternative name is Continue reading

Understanding Wax Casting

The fact that investment casting is also known as “wax casting” and “lost wax casting” can make it difficult for outsiders to understand the process. “Lost wax casting” is a bit of a confusing term, but “wax casting” just seems like an outright misnomer (at least when the term is used in connection with investment casting). After all, the investment casting process is not about casting a wax product and Continue reading

Brass Investment Castings – Attractive for Many Reasons

I was asked to think of a valve and describe it, I would be torn between picking one of two images that pop into my head. I’m picturing a metal spigot with a waffley-shaped handle that spins around a central axis. It’s the kind of valve that I connect to a garden hose to water my lawn. The other image that comes to mind is the kind of valve that I saw frequently in mechanical rooms when I worked as a janitor in college. These valves feature a long, slender, rectangular Continue reading

Stainless Steel Investment Casting: Golf Clubs and More

I am a terrible golfer. That’s not to say that I don’t enjoy it, but I have no illusions about my abilities as a golfer or my prospects for improvement. This past summer, after having played golf maybe a dozen times every year since late elementary school, I sank my first par. It was simultaneously exciting and embarrassing (but mostly exciting). My current set of clubs is composed mainly of stainless steel club heads and, I think, stainless Continue reading

Titanium Investment Casting: Less Common, but Just as Important

Titanium is not your typical investment casting metal. The combination of its very high melting point and its high cost can make titanium less attractive than lighter, more malleable, less expensive metals. Aluminum, stainless steel, copper and nickel are more commonly investment cast than titanium. However, in certain ways, titanium is well-suited to Continue reading

How Precision Investment Casting Services Serve Industry

I once saw a video about the investment casting process, and I was struck by a few things as I was watching it. First, I was struck by the number of different phases involved in the process of investment casting products. The pattern making phases, the shell coating phases, the casting phase and the shell breaking phase each seem complicated enough without being combined together into one metalworking process. I was also struck by how such imprecise-looking shells could produce Continue reading