excellent service and quality.
Investment Castings
Graphicast casts parts made from ZA12 ¡ª a zinc aluminum alloy ¡ª in graphite permanent molds. Our services include casting design assistance, mold making, casting, CNC machining and CMM-based inspection.
Design engineers should consider Graphicast for several reasons: If you need quick turnaround, we can usually turn a CAD design into a production part in six weeks. If you need to produce tight tolerance parts, our in-house CNC machining centers and CMM-based inspection systems produce machined castings for stringent requirements, such as medical diagnostic equipment. If your production demands are from 100 to 10,000 parts per year, Steel investment casting our process can be the most economical way of manufacturing your parts.
When looking for a casting service, you should ensure that your supplier can help you with designing your part for casting from the start of your design effort. This lowers the cost of the part by capturing as many features as possible in the cast part, reducing secondary machining.
The supplier should also be able to provide several types of prototypes to help in design evaluation. Additionally, the supplier should be able to provide as complete a part as possible, including machining, finishing and assembly to reduce lead times and costs.
For many designers, we¡¯ve found that ZA12 is a new material to them. Once they recognize the excellent physical properties of the alloy and the lower costs of graphite permanent mold castings, they apply this knowledge to many cost saving projects and new designs.
Prototype Casting has been in business for over 15 years, working with aluminum, magnesium and zinc. We specialize in rapid casting, getting castings for testing form, fit and function in as little as three to seven days ¡ª depending on geometry and complexity.
This helps design engineers get a new product to market faster, with less development expenses.Investment Castings We employ rubber plaster molding (RPM), investment casting and precision sand casting.
We have recently added a ProJet CP3000 wax pattern production system [3D Systems] with a print envelope of approximately 11¡± x 7¡± x 7¡±. After a pattern is printed, it is connected to a tree and covered with slurry. The slurry-covered mold and tree are placed into a furnace to burn out the wax pattern and molten metal is poured into the void created. This investment casting process allows us to ship a small number of castings in as little as three days, depending on geometry and complexity.
Casting tolerances vary depending on part geometry and metal being used, the minimum casting wall thickness for stainless steel is .125¡±, aluminum is approximately .040¡± and the minimum wall thickness for magnesium is .080¡±.
The expansion of our precision or ¡°No Bake¡± Cnc Screw process allows us the ability to create high tolerance master patterns and sand molds for larger castings, up to 20 pounds, in stainless steel and mild steel. First article castings can ship in five to seven days, depending on the amount of post cast machining required.
The minimum casting wall thickness for stainless steel is .250¡±, aluminum is .150¡± and magnesium is approximately .200¡±, depending on part geometry. We also offer finishing options, such as dye pen, chemfilm, inspection reports, liquid paint and powder coating.
