processingdetails

Ceramic Mold Casting

Ceramic mold casting, also referred as ceramic molding, is a series of metal casting processes that use ceramics as the mold material. It is a complex combination of plaster mold casting and investment casting. There are two types of ceramic mold casting: the Shaw process and the Unicast process.

Making a ceramic mold is similar to making a plaster mold, the pattern used in ceramic mold casting is made of plaster, plastic, wood, metal or rubber. Slurry of ceramic is poured over the pattern. It will harden rapidly to the consistency of rubber. This can be peeled of the pattern, reassembled as a mold. The volatiles are removed using a flame torch or in a low temperature oven. It is then baked in a furnace at about 1000 °C (1832 °F) yielding a ceramic mold, capable of high temperature pours. Additionally, the pour can take place while the mold is until hot.

These casting processes are commonly used to make tooling, especially drop forging dies, but also injection molding dies, die casting dies, glass molds, stamping dies, and extrusion dies. This process is expensive, but can eliminate secondary machining operations. Typical parts made from this process include impellers made from stainless steel, bronze, complex cutting tools, plastic mold tooling.