Casting Design Handbook
INTRODUCTION
The casting industry is one filled with mystery, science
and art. Founding is the second oldest profession. Castings dating back to at
least 4000 B.C. were made in ancient China. In spite of that fact, it is a
business that can be mysterious and intimidating to an outsider. Hopefully this
site will help the casting designer, user and buyer get more out of the
process.
There are sections on foundry processes, casting design,
tolerances of sand castings, quality assurance methods specific to foundries, an
alloy selection guide for nonferrous sand casting alloys and a collection of
metalcasting glossaries.
Be sure that you make your design efforts pay. Consider the
end use of the component and weigh the costs of the casting, machining and
design process to determine the amount of time you put in up front.
A precision component that gets complex machining, is
seen by the ultimate consumer, carries heavy load and is made by the thousands
should receive a great deal of attention in the design phase to minimize costs
at every step of the way later on.
This site will spend a small
amount of time outlining the many processes available to the design engineer but
its concentration will be on nonferrous sand castings. The designer will find
that the section on design principles will be useful no matter what process or
what alloy is to be used.
We are very grateful to The Aluminum Association for
permission to reproduce their engineering standards. The entire section on
tolerances is excerpted from their standards handbook number 18.
The recommendations contained in this
site are not intended as specifications. They are presented as
guidelines. Good judgment is an essential ingredient of any design endeavor.
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