Comparing Investment Casting and Sand Casting: Everything you Need to Know

Investment casting and sand casting are both processes that can be used to make metal components, and both have their advantages and disadvantages.

What is Sand Casting?

Sand casting is used to make around 60% of casted products. Sand casting uses a sand mould, where sand is packed together tightly around a pattern to create smooth moulding surface. Molten metal is then poured into the cavity in the sand mould.

Sand casting offers versatility in terms of size and weight, so is more often used for bigger parts that require less accuracy.

Investment casting tends to be more popular when making precision castings due to its superiority in handling complex high tolerance designs, surface finishes and its ability to only be machined once.

Advantages of Investment Casting

• Can be used to cast a wide variety of ferrous and non-ferrous alloys.
• Low volume production runs are cheaper as tooling is less costly.
• Can produce much more complex designs, incorporating design features such as logos.
• Parts require little machining after finishing.
• Excellent surface finishes can be achieved.

Advantages of Sand Casting

• Low cost in small volumes.
• Not limited by size.
• Easy to change part design

Disadvantages of Investment Casting

• Cycle times are much longer due to the nature of the process.
• Part size is limited by what can be securely gated to a tree.
• Dimensional accuracy is diminished with increasing part size.

Disadvantages of Sand Casting

• High cost in large production runs.
• Parts are less complex.
• Lower dimensional accuracy.
• Surface finish requires additional work.

https://www.texmoblank.com/investment-castings.