The essence of the investment casting process is making the model of a material that can be molten or dissolved and having one-piece mould without breaking that provides high precision castings. Prototype of the current process is casting in moulds based on wax models. Wax models were used for making cast jewelry and other household items as early as in ancient Babylonia and Elam. Today, wax is in demand like four thousand years ago - of course, in a modified version suitable for industrial technology. It, along with paraffin, is often the basis of easily melted mass for a model material.

Investment Casting Opportunities 

Investment casting is used to produce castings of complex configurations with wall thickness of up to 0.3 mm and diameter holes of up to 2 mm, with geometric dimension precision of up to 0.5 mm, and good surface quality - mainly of steels and superalloys. By using investment casting, you produce products that cannot be machined and precision castings, for example, in the aviation and precision engineering. The precision of castings can be up to 4th grade and surface roughness - Ra 2.5-1.25 microns, which in some cases eliminates machining. The product material may be virtually any alloy, including refractory and high alloys. 

This casting method is optimal when it is required to produce units of machines, devices, systems, which in conventional casting would have to be assembled of individual parts. In some cases, the use of investment casting allows us to achieve desired mechanical properties of products that cannot be achieved by other metal casting methods. This method is the most cost-effective way to make small but complex configuration castings and large castings, which are subject to high requirements to dimensional precision and cast surface purity, and castings of hard alloys. Investment casting can be used in single, serial and mass production.