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.