Some information about lost foam casting you do not know

[megan2008]

Lost-foam casting was invented in 1964 by M.C. Flemmings. Public recognition of the benefits of LFC was made by General Motors in the mid 1980s when it announced its new car line, Saturn, would utilize LFC for production of all engine blocks, cylinder heads, crankshafts, differential carriers, andtransmission cases.

Commonly cast metals include cast iron gear, aluminium alloys, steels, and nickel alloys; less frequentlystainless steels and copper alloys are also cast. The size range is from 0.5 kg to several tonnes (tons). The minimum wall thickness is 2.5 mm (0.098 in) and there is no upper limit. Typical surface finishes are from 2.5 to 25 µm (100 to 1000 µin) RMS.Typical linear tolerances are ±0.005 mm/mm (0.005 in/in).

This casting process is advantageous for very complex castings that would regularly require cores. It is also dimensionally accurate, maintains an excellent surface finish, requires no draft, and has no parting lines so no flash is formed. As compared to investment casting, it is cheaper because it is a simpler process and the foam is cheaper than the wax. Risers are not usually required due to the nature of the process; because the molten metal vaporizes the foam the first metal into the mold cools more quickly than the rest, which results in natural directional solidification. Foam is easy to manipulate, carve and glue, due to its unique properties. The flexibility of LFC often allows for consolidating the parts into one integral component; other forming processes would require the production of one or more parts to be assembled.

The two main disadvantages are that pattern costs can be high for low volume applications and the patterns are easily damaged or distorted due to their low strength.If a die is used to create the patterns there is a large initial cost.

Fotai has strong technical force and powerful production capacity and mainly casts all kinds of high standard stainless steel casting, high manganese steel pieces, stainless steel parts, grey iron pieces, nodular iron casting, high chromium cast iron parts, aluminium casting and alloy steel parts which can be widely used in many industrial departments such as engineering machinery, mining machinery, rubber machinery, agricultural machinery, shipbuilding industry and pump body and valve industry.

investment casting manufacturers: http://www.ftm-china.com/product/investment-castings.html