Investment Casting

Steel and stainless steel investment castings are available quickly and at low cost from our high-end Chinese factory. Tight tolerances and mirror finishes are standard. Investment castings, also known as lost wax castings, or precision castings, give you a fine finish and closer tolerances, often making further machining unnecessary.  Highly polished surfaces are commonly investment cast due to the smooth surfaces resulting, which are much finer than sand casting.   This method can be profitably used to combine parts, to avoid machining, and to make complex shapes that could not be made any other way.  We can generally hold ±0.005 inches tolerances, with as-cast surfaces of 125 RMS. Mirror finish requires smooth cast surface, available only in investment casting.  We can cast in grey iron, ductile iron, carbon steel, manganese steel, or alloy steel, as well as a wide range of stainless steel and specialty stainless. Investment castings, from China and the Pacific Rim are making inroads into the American market. Why? Modern skilled labor, and low cost tooling, which can be labor intensive! See the difference!   Typical cast steel cam has complex shape with little or no machining. Well-defined ribs and other features are possible, including undercuts that would be impossible in powdered metal. Note the difference in finish between the sand cast product below and the investment cast part on its left. While sand cast steel parts are lower in cost, for slightly more you can have a smoother, lighter part that needs little to no machining. While investment casting tooling is much more expensive in the USA, this difference is very small in our Asian factory because the difference in labor. These particular pieces were made both ways. Machined castings are especially good candidates for saving through investment casting.