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Engineering LibreTexts

10.8: Investment Casting

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Investment casting is used to make precision parts with a good surface finish. It is used to make turbine blades from a single crystal Ni-based superalloys. As the moulds are made from ceramic, metals with high melting points can be cast in this way.

  • A pattern of the required component is formed out of wax usually through injection moulding into a metal mould. A runner and gate are included within the wax pattern. Pre formed ceramic cores can also be added, so that hollow castings can be made.
  • Many wax patterns are then connected together to form a tree, and this is then dipped into a ceramic slurry, which sets through drying. Different layers of ceramic are created around the wax patterns, increasing in coarseness.
  • The wax patterns are then melted out, ready for the molten metal to be poured in to create the castings.
  • The ceramic mould is broken to reveal the castings, and any ceramic cores added at the start can be chemically etched out to leave a hollow structure.
Investment wax Investment mould Investment blades
Investment wax Investment mould Investment blades

https://www.doitpoms.ac.uk/tlplib/ca...entcasting.mp4

Advantages

  • Metals with a high melting temperature can be cast due to ceramic mould
  • Complex shapes can be formed by using ceramic liners in the original wax patterns
  • Good surface finish can be obtained using fine ceramic material

Disadvantages

  • Expensive as mould cannot be reused
  • Time consuming (drying times for ceramic range roughly 24 hrs)

This page titled 10.8: Investment Casting is shared under a CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Dissemination of IT for the Promotion of Materials Science (DoITPoMS) via source content that was edited to the style and standards of the LibreTexts platform.

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