Article

Sand Casting

Sand casting is a process, which is use to make or manufacture large components and equipment made out of brass, aluminum, iron and bronze. First of all melt the metal and then gently poured into a mould, which is made up of sand. The casting mold is actually pre heated to nearly 392 degree Fahrenheit before the metal is pored in the cavity.

Sand casting: It is amongst the simplest and most popular type of casting that used since ages. It involves very small size operation. The bonding of sand takes place by use of clays or 'polymerized oils', or 'chemical binders'. Recycling is easily possible of sand casting.

There are no difference between plaster casting and sand casting, except the fact that plaster is used in the place of sand. Similarly, there are also plastic and concrete castings.

Sand casting is very simple and popular technique to duplicate metals objects. You can make durable and complex shapes by using sand casting moulds. You can smooth or plain the texture of the object cast by grinding and polishing to achieve greater accuracy in the dimensions. This method of casting will likely prevail into the future.

Disadvantages of sand casting

Although the method of sand casting is still frequently used for metal pipes and other items, there are detriments to its use:

· Machining and finishing costs. As the surface texture of the cast is uneven, you need to have to incur heavy expense to improve the item through machine grinding and polishing.

· Material usage. You have to make a fresh mould each time in sand casting you want to cast a new object. This is costly in term of material used, as many sand moulds have to be made.

· Unusable casts. Due to the nature of the sand casting process, there is a risk of casting objects that cannot be used. This would result in wastage of material that increases the production costs.

· High spare parts. In the sand casting horizontal molding lines in factories require a high number of spare parts for its movable sections. This is compounded by the less productivity, which enables only 90 – 120 sand moulds to be made per hour for each molding unit. Nevertheless, horizontal lines are mostly common used compared to vertical molding lines, which are far more efficient, producing up to 550 sand moulds per hour with a 98% efficiency rate.