Investment Casting Trends: From Us strong base in gas turbine manufacturing, the investment casting process is now finding new applications in the defense, automotive, medical, and other industry segments

摘要

Investment casting has a bright future because designers in a growing number of industry segments-and new areas of established seg-ments - are exploring the problem-solving capabilities of the process and discovering a range of benefits waiting to be tapped. As investment casting broadens the product areas in which it is being successfully applied, designers are pioneering and documenting a variety of innovative applications. These applications demonstrate the ways investment casting can deal with shortcomings of alternative manufacturing processes. Typically, those shortcomings include excessive cost, lengthy manufacturing cycle times, premature component failure, and the design limitations of alternative processes that hamper competitiveness. This article describes the benefits of investment casting, including recent process improvements, and provides several application example.