Sand Casting, Sand Casting manufacturer & Supplier.

Help You Learn & Understand How To Sand Cast Molten Metal.

In this age of rapidly diminishing practical skills, the purpose of this web site is to teach practical foundry skills & techniques which will provide independance and freedom of expression in metal. People tell us over and over that they lament the death of the old style skilled tradesman, and you’d know who they mean wouldn’t you… the kind of bloke who can fix or make almost anything, or create beautiful things in metal from a simple idea.

Does That Sound Like Something That You Would Like To Do?

Are you practical minded? Like to build things? Enjoy a creative practical challenge? Then welcome to the world of hobby metal casting, we have a heap of idea’s and things for you to explore.

You’ll be joining other people from over forty seven countries from around the globe learning about the art of metal casting, we can help teach & share with you how to set up your hobby foundry, right in your own home workshop using equipment & tools you can easily self-build.

Many people really enjoy casting metal, there is something magic about watching molten metal flow into a sand mould.

But What Can I Make You May Ask?
All kinds of things. The only limiting factor is the amount of: Skill - Imagination - Determination & Passion you have. Foundry work is fairly basic, generally, a timber pattern is made using simple hand wood working tools, the pattern is used to create a cavity in a two-part sand mould, the sand is rammed around the pattern, then it is carefully removed, the molten metal which is melted in a simple furnace, is poured quickly into the mould cavity, and allowed to solidify. The more you learn about metal casting, the better your skills, creativity & work will become.

Practical minded people begin casting metal for all kinds of different reasons, the trigger for most is a desperate need to remake an obsolete part for a restoration project, and when you think about it, it really makes sense, if a part was originally made using the green sand casting technique, then nine times out of ten, it can be reproduced again using the same technique, this is the kind of thing we teach in our ebooks, using practical methods to recreate castings from aluminium or bronze. The metal casting process is not difficult to learn, and once you know how, you are only limited by your imagination.

Green Sand.
The image above shows a common foundry moulding medium called green sand, the name has nothing to do with the colour. When a pattern is rammed with well prepared green sand in a mould box, the fine grains of sand bond together & retain the exact shape of the pattern, (foundry sand is not quite the same as beach or river sand), and when the pattern is rapped & removed, a replica shaped cavity remains which is where the molten metal is poured. Other types of silica sand can be used for making moulds also, but green sand is good to start with. Many art casting studios still use only green sand for their foundry work.

Aluminium Ingots.

Aluminium, because of it’s relatively low melting temperature (740C) is a great way to begin metal casting, you can collect & melt good quality scrap to make your own ingots, which will be used at a later stage to make quality metal castings, good clean scrap can be sourced from: engine inlet manifolds, old aluminium cylinder heads, cast aluminium cover plates, bell housings, etc. Good scrap metal can be found in many places.

Salamander Silicon Carbide Crucible.

Most hobby foundry workers build their own Gas Fired Furnace. The Metal Casting Made Easy ebook provides complete instructions. All measurements are supplied in both imperial and metric. The furnace interior is lined with a high temperature resistant refractory cement which can be obtained from a foundry supply warehouse, you can also make your own home made refractory, (an old time recipe is included in the ebook) but the home brew refractory may not last as long as the proven commercial variety, but it is a low-cost way to start with.

Internal View Of Red Hot Gas Fired Furnace.

After preparing the sand mould, and the metal has reached a molten state in the furnace & crucible, it is then  ready to pour. The crucible full of molten metal is carefully removed from the furnace with a pair of special  lifting tongs and placed into a well designed pouring shank, wearing the proper safety gear you take hold of the pouring shank which cradles the crucible and then quickly pour the molten metal into the sprue of the sand mould. After the metal cools down, the mould boxes can be pulled apart to reveal the bright new metal art casting - vintage car or motorcycle part, or perhaps a reproduction part for an old machine of some kind, the objects you can make with metal casting are almost endless.

Pouring Molten Metal Into a Green Sand Mould.

When you have become familiar with the methods and techniques of metal casting you will be able to start making your own special castings, which may include parts for veteran & vintage cars, or even the later model classic models built in the sixties. The raw castings in the picture below are fresh out of the green sand mould, the large cone shaped vertical extensions are the sprues & riser. The castings pictured below are the raw cast slugs of clutch slave cylinders for a British car built in the sixties.

Raw Aluminium Automotive Slave Cylinder Castings.

The gates - runners & sprues are then removed from the castings, along with the sand cores, the cylinders are then prepared for the machining operations, to carry out the machining of the castings, a small bench lathe, a pedestal drill, and some small home made tooling & jigs were used to produce the finished cylinder as shown below. The casting of pressure vessels requires that very tight, porous free metal is cast, there are simple techniques you can employ to cast high quality cylinders, these techniques are explained in the books.

Fully Machined Slave Cylinder Ready To Install.

The ebooks available on this web site have helped countless people learn how to cast their own vintage car - motor-cycle - antique - art castings - sculptures - property name plates - and odd parts for special projects. The possibilities are endless once you know and understand the basic methods and techniques of metal casting. But you should also be aware that handling molten metal can be dangerous, unsafe practices can cause personal injuries. The metal casting process requires that great care should be exercised at all times, the hobby foundry is not the place for stupidity or careless behaviour.

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Background

Zinc and zinc alloys are used for extrusions, castings, forgings, rolled sheet or drawn wire and of course as a protective coating. Two other major uses are as sacrificial anodes and in brass alloys.
Application of Zinc Coatings

Zinc coatings are either applied from a bath of molten zinc or from a dip of zinc/0.2% aluminium in a strip galvanising line or by thermal spray (or metallising), mechanical plating (called barrel plating after the tumbling process used to carry it out) or else, for thinner coatings, by electroplating.
Casting of Zinc Alloys

Zinc alloys have been used in die casting for over 60 years and white hypoeutectoid alloys with <5% aluminium were used for pressure die castings, the current practice is to use the range of higher strength hypereutectoid zinc/aluminium alloys. Alloy contamination must be minimised to maintain mechanical and corrosion resistance properties. Zinc alloys have low melting points, good fluidity and, because of the relatively rapid chill rate, are quite stable dimensionally. The alloys lose about 25 to 35 % of tensile and yield strength at 100°C.

Gravity castings also require high purity stock. Dimensional stability may be assured by a stabilising treatment @250°C for 12 hours followed by furnace cooling. Specialised slush casting alloys are used for hollow objects. Zinc castings are often surface finished and treatments include phosphating prior to painting and anodising, or more commonly chromating, to provide corrosion resistance and prevent white rust during damp storage.
Joining of Zinc Alloys

Components may be soldered, brazed or even adhesively bonded. Use of mechanical fasteners requires adherence to recommended torques.
Wrought and Superplastic Zinc Alloys

Wrought zinc products include zinc or foil with typically <1% alloying addition of copper or lesser quantities of lead, titanium, manganese or cadmium. A superplastic alloy with 21 to 23% aluminium is readily formed into complex shapes.
Corrosion of Zinc Alloys

Zinc is resistant to corrosion by chemicals over a pH range from 6 to 12.5. It produces white corrosion product when kept wet especially when freshly exposed.

Die casting is a process that produces metal parts by forcing molten metal into reusable steel molds under high pressure. These molds also known as dies are specially designed to produce different shapes of varying complexity with a high level of accuracy and repeatability.

Die casting metal helps to produce sharply defined shapes with textured or smooth surfaces. This unique process is widely used in the metalworking industry to manufacture mass produced commercial, consumer, and industrial products. You can manufacture parts ranging from toys to automobile parts to faucets.

Die Casting Process

In the die casting process, the molten metal is injected under high pressure into the die or the steel mold.  Die casting machines are rated in terms of tonnage which is the amount of pressure that can be exerted on the material. The machines typically range from 40 tons to 4000 tons.

Advantages of Die-casting

• Die-casting is an economical and efficient process that provides a wide range of shapes.
• Die-casting is a fast process.
• The parts produced are dimensionally uniform.

NINGBO REICAN MACHINERY COMPANY is a professional supplier for casting and machined part which is widely used for Automobile, Medical, earthmover, petroleum, electricity Industry, and in long-term business with foreign customers from North America and west Europe, we are exactly know what’s the customer requirement when they provide drawings and material specification. And our engineering dept. can suggest the best process and technology to make the component or any design changing if necessary. Most of our products are exported to Canada, USA, and west Europe Germany, France, Denmark, Italy, Norway,Turkey, Finland, Switzerland, etc.

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Production of aluminum products (all types of castings exclusive of ingots) has increased over the past 30 years at a fairly steady rate.

Aluminum casting alloys must contain, in addition to strengthening elements, sufficient amounts of eutectic-forming elements (usually silicon) in order to have adequate fluidity to feed the shrinkage that occurs in all but the simplest castings. Required amounts of eutectic formers depend in part on casting process. Alloys for sand casting generally are lower in eutectics than those for casting in metal molds, because sand molds can tolerate a degree of hot shortness that would lead to extensive cracking in non-yielding metal molds.

The range of cooling rates characteristic of the casting process being used controls to some extent the distribution of alloying and impurity elements. For example, the extremely high cooling rates inherent in die casting result in fine dispersion of strengthening and eutectic-forming constituents, and reasonably good castings can be obtained in spite of impurity contents that would render sand or plaster-mold castings unacceptable. However, with these minor exceptions, most aluminum foundry alloys can be cast by all processes, and choice of casting technique usually is controlled by factors other than alloy composition.

A large number of aluminum alloys has been developed for casting, but most of them are varieties of six basic types: aluminum-copper, aluminum-copper-silicon, aluminum-silicon, aluminum-magnesium, aluminum-zinc-magnesium and aluminum-tin alloys.

Aluminum-copper alloys that contain 4 to 5% Cu, with the usual impurities iron and silicon and sometimes with small amounts of magnesium, are heat-treatable and can reach quite high strength and ductility, especially if prepared from ingot containing less than 0.15% iron.

Manganese in small amounts also may be added, mainly to combine with the iron and silicon and reduce their embrittling effect. However, these alloys have poor castability and require very careful gating if sound castings are to be obtained. Such alloys are used mainly in sand casting; when they are cast in metal molds, silicon must be added to increase fluidity and curtail hot shortness, and this addition of silicon substantially reduces ductility.

AI-Cu alloys with somewhat higher copper contents (7 to 8%), formerly the most commonly used aluminum casting alloys, have steadily been replaced by AI-Cu-Si alloys and today are used to a very limited extent. The best attribute of these higher-copper Al-Cu alloys is their insensitivity to impurities, but they have very low strength and only fair castability. Also in limited use are AI-Cu alloys that contain 9 to 11 % Cu, whose high-temperature strength and wear resistance make them suitable for automotive pistons and cylinder blocks. These alloys usually contain manganese as an impurity because wrought metal scrap is used in preparing them. The manganese has little effect.

Very good high-temperature strength is an attribute of alloys containing copper, nickel and magnesium, sometimes with iron in place of part of the nickel.

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The mainDie Casting alloys are: zinc, aluminium, magnesium, copper, lead, and tin. Specific Die Casting alloys include: ZAMAK, zinc aluminium, AA 380, AA 384, AA 386, AA 390, and AZ91D magnesium. The following is a summary of the advantages of each alloy:

• Zinc: the easiest alloy to cast; high ductility; high impact strength; easily plated; economical for small parts; promotes long die life.
• Aluminium: lightweight; high dimensional stability for complex shapes and thin walls; good corrosion resistance; good mechanical properties; high thermal and electrical conductivity; retains strength at high temperatures.
• Magnesium: the easiest alloy to machine; excellent strength-to-weight ratio; lightest alloy commonly die cast.
• Copper: high hardness; high corrosion resistance; highest mechanical properties of alloys die cast; excellent wear resistance; excellent dimensional stability; strength approaching that of steel parts.
• Lead and Tin: high density; extremely close dimensional accuracy; used for special forms of corrosion resistance.

Maximum weight limits for aluminium, brass, magnesium, and zinc castings are approximately 70 pounds (32 kg), 10 lb (5 kg), 44 lb (20 kg), and 75 lb (34 kg), respectively.

The material used defines the minimum section thickness and minimum draft required for a casting as outlined in the table below.

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