Design For Manufacture

Designing Your Product

Starting with an idea, an outline drawing or concept 3D Model, we can quickly provide detailed drawings and diagrams that will help you finalise your design requirements.

We use Solidworks™ software to enable you to visualise the final product. There are some design guidelines that need to be considered.

Investment Casting Design Considerations

There are several key points that we need to consider to ensure that we can deliver your finalised product on time and within budget.

We have listed some of the more important aspects below:

• Keep casting sections to a uniform thickness and avoid several sections meeting at one point

• We do not require draft angles

• Avoid heavy isolated sections

• Avoid sharp internal corners; a small radius of 0.5mm is preferred

• Most holes can be cast at clearance, reaming or tapping sizes

• Specify all numbering, logos and lettering required and whether embossed or de-bossed is required. Embossed within a sunken recess is generally preferable

• Indicate the machining allowance, if required

• Casting feed pads should normally be placed at the heaviest section, in a flat area for ease of removal

• Avoid deep narrow blind channels or pockets if possible

• Select a suitable alloy from the standard alloy ranges cast

• Section sizes of less than 1.0mm can be cast locally, with sections > 1.5mm preferable

Below is a table with our cast hole preferences:

Note: Features that exceed these design constraints can be cast utilising preformed ceramic cores.