How to Save Money When Buying ductile iron sand casting supplier

Buying metal castings is not always straight forward. No matter your knowledge base, there is a lot to understand &#; on both your end and the Foundry&#;s. Factors like Alloy selection, moulding/finishing processes, core requirements, supply terms&#; to get the most value for your money, all of these need to be understood. But by simply expanding on your knowledge on Metal Casting, well, you will have already started the process of evaluating costs and benefits. Before we gear up for the more well-known costs of metal casting, there are a few considerations you may not have thought about.

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Economies of Scale &#; Weigh it Up

Let us say you have a casting order requirement that&#;s less than 100 kg, but the Foundry you are currently working with accommodates for Medium to Large Scale Casting. You will be wasting crucial capital on both their Furnace&#;s power and casting yield. It is essential to ensure that the Foundry you have chosen is right for your requirements. For example, for order volumes over 1 metric tonne you should choose a Foundry geared for medium and high economies of scale, ideally with a Furnace 500 kg or larger.

Foundry Alterations &#; Be Prepared

When negotiating the purchase of castings from any Foundry do not expect your product to be supplied at cost. If your Foundry goes out of business, you are likely to face a large expense from new patterns at a new Foundry. Or at least, modifying existing patterns to suit another Foundry&#;s moulding equipment. Make sure to partner with a Foundry that will remain in business for as long as you will be requiring your castings, so be reasonable on price when finding your best Foundry partner.

Local Scrap and Supply Chain &#; Check for Kinks

So much of your Foundry&#;s raw material cost will be down to supply chain and local scrap availability. It is important to identify not only what your chosen Foundry&#;s costs are during the casting process but also what costs might be included before anything has even touched the Furnace. Read on to find more about material costs below.

The Metal

To calculate the cost of metal you need to know three things: Alloy Type, Casting Weight, and Total Tree Weight (including runners and risers). Alloys are a combination of a base metal like Iron, Copper, or Aluminium, all in conjunction with a range of Additives. These Additives can cause huge changes to the properties of metal even in very small amounts. When the correct, specific Alloy or Composition is determined, the casting process will begin to take shape.

The Foundry

Your Foundry will calculate the correct amount of base metal required per Kg of casting and the number of Alloys and Additives required to achieve the desired Composition. But take note, in some cases a higher amount of additive is required to allow for melting loss and oxidisation, depending on your casting process.

Once the amounts of base metal and Alloy additives have been determined the source of the metal should be selected to achieve the lowest cost of raw materials. Global metal exchanges are often used as cost benchmarks such as the London Metal Exchange (LME), a great way to analyse the costs of the raw materials you need.

Ref. © The London Metal Exchange, 25 March .

Now you have your materials, let us breakdown your Foundry&#;s Furnace.

The first processing of metal is the melting process, which is performed in your Foundry&#;s Furnaces. Induction is the most common Furnace type for production casting and Cupola, for example, for Cast Iron.

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But, as always, there are costs.

The main cost of Metal Melting is electricity. But operational labour and maintenance have a significant impact too. Most Foundries know how these costs translate to their metal melting cost per Kg at spout &#; it is the average cost for them to get 1kg of any molten metal prepared for pouring from the Furnace. But with varying Foundries comes varying work force sizes and power needs, so be sure to take these into account.

Cost of material procurement is not the only material cost in casting. The type of Alloy is an obvious consideration too &#; some Alloys have a higher melting point and so require more Furnace time. That said, a highly efficient Foundry can achieve a cost of as low as $0.30 USD for Cast Iron. Whereas low volume Furnaces with expensive electricity can cost as much as $1.50 USD per Kg. The melting cost then needs to be multiplied by the casting weight and divided by the casting yield. The yield is the percentage of casting tree that is the actual casting. This is where partnering with a Foundry that uses the correct economies of scale comes into play. Remember &#; bigger is not always better as Furnace melting cost is regulated in part by the Kilowatt capacity and efficiency of the Furnace. So, what type of costs can you expect to face when it comes to types of casting?

Moulding Costs

Moulding costs vary substantially depending on your favoured process. From low to high &#; Die Casting and Continuous Casting, Green Sand Casting, Hard Sand or Resin Sand Moulding, and then Shell Sand and Investment Casting.

Let us break them down.

Die Casting and Continuous Casting &#; Low material usage with a high output to labour cost ratio.

While the low cost of this process is a relief on expenditure, the geometry possible with these production processes is limited and the tooling cost is high. That said, moulding cost of this production process is normally a small fraction of the metal cost going in.

Green Sand Moulding &#; Relatively low cost due to reuse potential of sand and output per labour hour being high.

This is made achievable with the common Semi-Automatic Jolt-Squeeze moulding machines and less common fully automated moulding machines. Using a Semi-Automatic moulding machine producing small moulding boxes 600mmx400mm a moulder could typically produce 8-15 moulds per hour. As moulds become more complicated or larger the output slows as moulders needs to insert cores and take more care to ensure forming of detailed impressions. For a small moulding box, the factory cost allowance would be about $0.50 USD per box plus the allocation of labour.

Hard Sand Moulding &#; Reasonable cost due to sand reclaiming technology

Includes Sodium Silicate sand and Furan resin sand casting. These moulding processes involve mixing Silica Sand with a Resin (normally 0.75%-1.2%) that sets when a catalyst is added. With these moulding processes using Chemical Resin and often an acid as the catalyst the cost is normally higher than green sand moulding. The moulding cost would typically be double the cost of green sand process, but this varies depending on the chemical used, the output of the mixer and moulder.

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