Method description
Investment casting is an exellent production method for manufacturing complicated parts from steel. The main steps of investment casting process are as follows:
- Make wax model with aluminium mold
- Wax model is coated with ceramic surface, “investment”
- Wax is removed from the ceramic shell by melting, “dewaxing”
- The shell mold is filled with melt steel
- The shell is broken by hammering to release the casted part
- Casted part is finished to the tolerances and surface finished defined by the technical drawings
Part size and tolerances
Typical mass of the parts are in the range of 0,02 … 10 kg. The dimensional tolerances after casting are typically ± 0,2 mm … ± 0,8 mm depending on the geometry of the casted part. Machining is used where needed to achieve more accurate tolerances. The casted part can be finished with various methods including mechanical or electrolytic polishing.
Steel materials
We make investment casting with two ISO9001-certified foundries. We can use a large selection of steel grades. The most common grades are AISI 304, AISI316 and duplex steel. Duplex steels are used to achieve a good combination of mechanical strength and corrosion resistance.Our main customers of investment cast parts are in the fields of medical furniture and process industry.