History of Investment Casting

What is Investment Casting?

Investment casting is a near net-shaping casting processing, and is applied widely. It’s available for many kinds of metal alloy. And the parts made by investment casting are better than these made by other casting processings in dimension accuracy, surface quality. Besides, it’s able to make complex parts these are difficult to be machined with good high temperature resistance, which always can not be made by other casting processings.

How did Investment Casting Begin?

Investment casting has been developed on the base on lost waxing casting in ancient. As an ancient civilization, China is one of the first batch of countries that used it. In ancient China, people utilized lost waxing casting to make tripods, containers, dishes, etc with beautiful and complex geometries.

Modern investment casting has been applied in industry since 1940s. In that time, jet engines was developed, which required many metal alloy parts with complex geometries, tight tolerance, smooth surface, heat resistance, such as blades, impellers, jet nozzles, etc, which weren’t achieved by other manufacturing processings. In that occasion, investment casting was started and developed.

Therefore, aviation industry has pushed investment casting to be applied well, and the continuous improvement of investment casting has helped with the booming of aviation industry. In China, investment casting was applied in industry since 1950s, and improved continually and enormously, and applied widely in aviation, auto, machine tools, ships, weapons, medical devices, etc.