Investment Casting Process for Power Generation Parts Manufacture

Investment casting is a powerful process often used to manufacture aerospace, defence, and power generation parts. The power generation system deals with coal, petroleum, natural gas, or geothermal energy demands strong and durable materials enough to withstand heat, moisture, and corrosion and ensure workers’ security.

The investment casting, also known as the lost-wax process, ensures the production of intricate parts and produces high-quality, robust components with fine details, thin walls and great accuracy, unlike sand and other casting procedures.

This type of casting provides exceptional "as-cast" surface finish, minimizes material waste, eliminates the need for machining, and implies huge reductions in cost and lead times.

Investment Casting Process

There are various steps in the investment casting process for the manufacture of power production metal parts. These are:

1. Pattern Creation

The creation of a wax pattern is the initial step of investment casting mold for power generation for wear-resistant products. It is also the basis of the precision investment casting method. The patterns are usually made by injecting the wax into the metal mold.

1. Mounting Wax Patterns and Tree Creation

In the next step, the finished wax pattern is assembled with other wax sprues for mass productions, and it forms a gate and delivery system. However, based on the size and configuration of power generation wear parts, multiple patterns are made from a single tree.

1. Shell Creation

Next in the process, the whole wax pattern is dipped in the ceramic slurry, usually covered with sand and later air-dried to form a shell. The cycle gets repeated continuously to form a thick layer of the shell, and this thickness is important to produce large metal parts. Once the shell gets dried, it is capable of retaining the molten metal while casting.

1. Wax Removal

The wax removal process needs special attention. It is very important to lose all wax in investment casting because the wax inside the shell could impact the quality of the final product. Wax can be lost from two methods:

• Steam autoclave: This machine removes most of the wax, and it also can be reused.
• Flashfire oven: This machine uses high-temperature operation and burns off the rest wax. Also, it increases the strength and stability of the material.

• Melting and Casting of Metals

Before pouring molten metal into the shell, it should be preheated to a specific temperature to avoid further solidification or freeze off. Generally, all type of alloy undergoes the same process. Alloys can be melted in two ways, either air melting or vacuum melting, based on alloy properties. However, vacuum melting is useful for reactive elements present in the alloy.

1. Final Stage

After the casting has been sufficiently cooled later the mold shell is separated from the casting using the knockout process. The runners and gates are cut out of the casting. If needed, final post-processing such as grinding, sandblasting, and machining is performed to complete the castings dimensionally.

Conclusion

The investment casting cost-efficient and environment friendly process used to manufacture large industrial-level components. The above process is often used in producing machine items for Aerospace and Defense, Power Generation, Automotive, Oil and Gas and Space Exploration.

About John Heine

John Heine delivers an extensive range of power generation castings, grinding elements and wear resistant parts. It manufactures products that attain optimum performance and reduce down time costs. Contact the team today to get best quality parts

Well I’m a business consultant and a blogger. I like to write on various topic like IT services, Automobiles, Food, Travel etc.