of
They can be the most powerful, lightest weight,
most durable engineered metal components...BUT
Designing them to their full potential is difficult.
Oshkosh Corporation
You’re not alone…that’s why we call it a cast metal “Intermediate Material Shape” with its own complex pedigree…mostly coming out of your metalcasting Supplier Teams’ metallurgical engineering and wide variety of mold processes.
Fundamental to our Cast Metal Intermediate Material Shapes methodology and its 3 Generations of Solid Models venue is “Castability Geometry” Alloy families vary widely in their metallurgical characteristics of flow, liquid delivery temperature, and solidification gradients…in response to the shape detail in the mold cavity.
If the alloy doesn’t “like” that shape detail, there’s going to be trouble…but no one defines “friendly shape detail” in advance for you. We do…we call it Castability Geometry…it is foundational and we define it’s characteristics for all alloy families.
As we launch new casting designs, we do well with prototypes…have some fits & re-starts, but the prototypes perform well structurally and or functionally.
Like “Castability Geometry” being foundational, yet a mystery, the principles of casting dimensional capability are another mystery. Our Cast Metal Intermediate Material Shapes instruction includes a major group of 6 instructional segments addressing causes of dimensional variation and solutions for dimensional compliance. There’s another 2 segments on the design and use of Functional Gauges to 100% verify dimensional compliance as process steps in casting finishing. And related…Design of Fabricating and/or Machining Fixtures.
It’s a manufacturing engineering problem that we will show you how to solve.
The short answer is “yes”…it comes with the integrated application of three groups of instructional segments…Castability Geometry, Dimensional Capability, and Downstream Processing Geometry…a total of 14. What makes that doable is the manufacturing engineering venue that the Cast Metal Intermediate Material Shapes methodology professes…using the 3 Generations of Solid Models.
We are aware of safety critical, long strain life castings in challenging structural applications.
Yet, castings have surface defects and solidification defects in their microstructure…how is such durability possible?
Structural Geometry, integrated with “Castability Geometry” and Mold & Cavity-Making Processes, can be engineered with high certainty.
Huge advances have been made in recent years with the surface and internal integrity capability of Mold & Cavity-Making Processes…especially those applicable to the light metals. Some of those advances have made structural designs a little less sensitive to “Castability Geometry,” but regardless the combination of those two is very important to structural durability. And our Segments focus on that.
At the heart of the 6 Dimensional Capability Segments and 2 Downstream Processing Geometry Segments is innovative application Geometric Dimensioning & Tolerancing to the mold cavity tooling and the tooling that upgrades some as-cast surfaces to final net shape by machining and/or fabricating.
GD&T is well-understood and pretty much universally applied to all kinds of component dimensional tolerances…including castings.
Should Cost is of interest to us, especially for castings. We see a lot a variation in quotes among our casting suppliers. We are suspicious that some quotes are not really based on their cost but their desire for the business.
A realistic algorithm for Should Cost has to be based on an actual, specific casting design. By the time an algorithm is given enough specifics to address a realistic, manufacturable, capable estimate of casting cost, an actual quote from a truly capable Metalcasting Supplier Team could have been solicited.
Problem is…who is that truly capable Metalcasting Supplier Team?
Our “3 Generations of Solid Models” for a casting design becomes a manufacturing engineering venue that brings forth evidence of manufacturing capability among Supplier Teams responding.
How that works is really innovative, involving a whole new way for OEM’s Procurement and Manufacturing Engineering functions to interact with Metalcasting Supplier Teams.
WHY?
The Design Phase of a metalcasting is the connecting link…nexus… between a component’s requirements and the HUGE array of casting industry’s Metallurgical and Manufacturing Process capabilities.
In a sentence, “It’s not a commodity…it has differences based on Mold & Cavity-Making Process choice, tooling design, and microstructure.” In a word, “It has a ‘Pedigree.’”
I bring you the following Design, Manufacturing, and Enterprise Management experience: