Steel Casting Services
Steel casting is essential for producing high-strength parts that require superior mechanical properties. CFS Foundry is a professional China steel foundry providing custom steel casting solutions for various applications.
- Utilizing Different Casting Types.
- A Variety of Steel Alloys Could Be Cast.
- Can Deliver Machined Finished Parts.
What is Steel Casting?
Steel casting is a specialized manufacturing form to produce solid steel parts by the casting process. The process involves pouring liquid steel into molds to create parts that are difficult through other manufacturing processes, such as forging, machining or stamping. It is very suitable for making high strength parts with complex geometries.
The process of steel casting begins with the design and manufacturing of a mold, whose material depends on the casting type. Then, the steel is melted in a furnace and poured into a mold. Once the steel solidifies and cools, the part is removed from the mold. Finally, the cast steel parts may still undergo heat treatment, machining or surface finishing to achieve net shape parts and required mechanical properties.
Why CFS Foundry for Steel Casting Services?
As a specialized steel foundry, CFS Foundry is the manufacturer and exporter of high quality steel castings with our lost wax investment casting process up to 100kg in weight. After 30 years’ hard working, we are now becoming one of the largest steel casting companies in China.
Currently, with a annual production capability 9,000t, our foundry has the ability to develop different kinds of custom steel castings for our customers in the shortest time, around 4-6 weeks. We have absolute advantages over other steel foundries for our ability of supplying steel castings in both short and high volume runs, machining, heat treatment, district inner quality control system, and other value-added services.
If you’re interested in using steel castings for your project, contact us today! As steel casting experts, we can provide you best design and manufacturing solution with the highest quality investment castings!
Steel Casting Materials
Alloy Steel
Main grades of steel castings in alloy steel are 42CrMo, 35CrMo, 40CrNiMo, 4130, 4140 and 8630, etc. With alloy steel, it can obtain special properties for products like high strength, high toughness, wear resistance, corrosion resistance and good working performance. This kind of material is more likely to produce cast wear parts for mining & construction machinery.
Carbon Steel
A steel with carbon content up to 2.1% by weight. Common grades of steel castings in carbon steel are ASTM 1020, ASTM 1030, ASTM 1045, ASTM 1060, etc. Carbon steel is ideal to make steel castings which have strong lade or stress demands to ensure mechanical properties. Carbon steel could be divided into low carbon steel (WC≤0.25%), middle carbon steel (WC 0.25%-0.6%) and high carbon steel (WC>0.6%) according to different carbon content. The higher the carbon content is, the higher the hardness and strength will be.
Stainless Steel
A steel alloy with a minimum of 10.5% chromium content by mass. It is highly corrosion resistant and wear resistant, provides excellent machinability, and is well-known for its aesthetic appearance. Main stainless steel grades for steel castings are SS304, SS316, PH17-4, etc. This type of material is commonly used for steel castings served for medical industry, food machinery, oilfield industry, etc.
Steel Casting Processes
Investment Casting
Refers to steel castings made in investment casting process. In investment casting, a ceramic slurry is applied around a disposable pattern to form a mold. Lost-foam casting is a casting process that is similar to investment casting except foam is used for the pattern instead of wax. Investment casting is a casting process in which a mold is made around a wax pattern that is burned away when the molten material is poured in. Investment casting process is preferred when the steel part is not large, normally less than 60kg. Such technique can help to win close tolerance, high accuracy and less defects. Most important is that steel castings by investment casting can achieve good surface finish and nearly net shape.
Sand Casting
Sand casting is an another process that utilizes non-reusable sand molds to form steel castings. It is a common production method for steel components of all sizes, from a few ounces to several tons. Sand casting isn’t only versatile in the size of its products – it can also create exceptionally complex or detailed steel castings, and can be used to cast nearly any metal alloy. Sand Casting process is recommended when the steel parts are large or not required for perfect surface finish. Due to its low production cost, the price of steel sand castings will be much more competitive than steel investment castings. So if the budget is limited and not enough for investment casting, you can consider steel sand casting as the method.
Why Steel Casting?
There are lots of advantages using steel casting. After steel casting, we can not only improve the mechanical properties, especially strength, but also improve its wear resistance and corrosion resistance,sometimes even change magnetic response or thermal expansion. Steel casting makes designed products much more flexible in dimensions, which is not feasible in other manufacturing methods. Steel castings are produced by melting steel ingots into liquid status and pouring the liquid steel into ceramic shell mold, this allows products cast to shapes when other manufacturing ways can not meet.
Another point of steel is its weldable. The weldability of steel castings made it workable when a individual cast steel component need to work with another metal part. Besides, steel casting can replace welded fabrication parts when the capacity of welding fabrication can not meet the capacity of products.
Due to its reliability and strength, numerous industries rely on steel castings. Industries that use steel castings range from food processing and electronics to oil and gas. Some typical industries that using steel castings include the railroad, construction, drilling, transportation, and mining industries. Main examples of items that are steel casting are: gears, valve bodies, pump castings, mining machinery parts, agricultural wear parts, marine equipment parts, engine cylinder blocker, and railroad truck frames, etc.
Benefits of Steel Casting over Steel Forging
- Weldability of steel castings is better than steel forgings.
- Complex shapes can be achieved by steel casting, which is not feasible by steel forging.
- Steel casting can make parts according to the chemical composition, however, parts by steel forging require a certain material specification.
- Products with small quantity can be performed with steel casting, but there is a MOQ on steel forging for its high tooling cost and labout cost.
- In certain stainless steels, castings tend to have better corrosion resistance than equivalent forgings because of controlled amounts of ferrite present in castings.
Steel Casting Surface Finishes
Shot Blasted Finish
Shot blasting is the most common suface finishing method of cast steel parts. It works by peening small steel balls onto the surface of each cast piece, and remove impurities and burrs to achieve a clean and smooth surface.
Machined Finish
Machined surface is required when some areas of cast steel parts can not meet the drawing's dimensional tolerance or surface finish requirement. CFS Foundry has our own machining workshop to meet various machining operations.
Painted Finish
Painting is a common surface finishing method for steel cast parts, which is very cost effective to prevent castings from rusting. A variety of colors are available by painting process.
Powder Coated Finish
Powder coating is a high-quality surface finishing way found on thousands of cast steel parts. It provides a more durable finish than liquid paints can offer, while still providing an attractive finish.
Zinc Plated Finish
Zinc plating is the process of covering cast steel parts with a layer or coating of zinc to protect the substrate from corrosion. Besides, it can also help to improve the strength for better working performance.
Electropolished Finish
Electropolishing is a very efficient surface finishing process for cast parts in stainless steel. It can not only increase the corrosion resistance but also bring a bright finish.
Black Oxidized Finish
Black oxide is a conversion coating used on cast steel parts. It results in a black, smooth surface finish, and improves corrosion resistance and wear resistance.
Polished Finish
Polishing is usually a manual finishing process by grinding cast steel parts for bright or shinning surface quality. Common polishing methods include brushed polishing or mirror polishing.
Gallery of Steel Casting Parts
Steel Casting FAQs
CFS Foundry has the capability of producing steel casting parts with different casting processes. For investment cast steel parts, we can control the liner dimensional tolerance within ISO 8062 CT5-CT8 level. While for sand cast steel parts, the liner dimensional tolerances ISO 8062 CT8-CT11 can be expected.
Quality inspection is a very important factor to guarantee the quality of steel casting parts. CFS Foundry follows 3 times of inspection during the whole production process. And we will provide material testing report, dimensional testing report, and mechanical properties testing report to our clients before delivery.
First of all, CFS Foundry is very professional on steel casting, we have rich experience in cast parts for various applications. We are really helpful when you are not familar with casting for your design. Our engineer can recommend the best suitable cast steel grade and casting process following the applications.
There are several factors that may affect the price of a cast steel part, mainly including the design complexity, metal type, part weight, and order quantity. CFS Foundry can offer the most competitive prices with best quality.
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