First-Class Investment Casting 17-4pH Stainless Steel Fluid Management Metal Water Flow Meter Parts

Advantages of Stainless Steel Castings

Stainless steel investment castings are used across a wide range of industry sectors for the following reasons:

• Excellent Corrosion Resistance: Chromium is used as an alloying element in stainless steel which helps improve its anti-corrosive properties. Unlike carbon and alloy steel, stainless steel castings require little or no additional surface finishing. This one reason why stainless steel investment cast parts are used in industrial components such as valves, pumps, and other parts where corrosion resistance is critical.
• Exceptional Visual Quality: Grade A visual appearance is possible for investment cast parts that require high visual quality.
• Surface Finishes: 120 RMS or better is easily achieve.
• Close Tolerances: ±.005 inch per inch tolerance levels can be achieved
• Near Net Shape Parts: Avoid long run time machine parts using near net investment cast parts.

• Creating the "pattern"(i.e. a replica) of the part that's to be cast by injecting wax into a die. This process is also used for die casting. Usually, the pattern is created as one piece.
• Compiling potentially several wax patterns into a completed assembly known as a gating system or "tree". This form allows molten metal to flow into the mould cavity at a later stage.
• Immersing the assembly in high-grade ceramic slurry(known as the investment stage).

• Building up an additional coating of coarse ceramic particles up to 10mm thick while the assembly is still wet.
• Melting the wax from the dry mould to leave a thin-walled and hollow ceramic shell.
• Firing the moulds to remove any last vestiges of wax and add durability to the final mould. This can necessitate temperatures of 1000°C.
• Pouring molten metal within the still-heated moulds. A heated mould is used to instil better dimensional accuracy, with tolerances of as low as .076mm enabled.
• Breaking or cutting the cooled shell mould open to reveal the casting.
• Cutting each pattern off the tree
• Finishing the final part using fettling, grinding, sandblasting, heat treatment and other testing or surface finishing processe.