Investment casting process
OwnerJuan De Antonio Gonalons, Ricardo Insausti Martinez De Lahidalgainventors
Life of this patent
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Abstract
An investment casting process utilizes a temporary mold which is formed by pouring a liquid over a positive pattern, and cooling the liquid until it solidifies. The positive pattern is removed, and a temporary pattern is formed by pouring another liquid into the cavity of the temporary mold, and cooling the second liquid until it solidifies. The temporary mold may then be melted or dissolved to leave a temporary pattern, which may be coated with a ceramic slurry to form a ceramic shell. The temporary pattern may then be melted or dissolved in order to remove the temporary pattern from the ceramic shell. The ceramic shell may be filled with molten metal which is allowed to solidify to form the final cast piece.
Claims10
An investment casting process for manufacturing a cast piece, comprising the steps of:
- (a) forming at least one positive pattern of a portion of the cast piece, the positive pattern having at least one interior cavity;
- (b) filling the at least one cavity of the at least one positive pattern with a liquid material M;
- (c) cooling the filled positive pattern until the material M reaches a solid state to form a temporary mold part;
- (d) removing the positive pattern from the temporary mold part;
- (e) forming a temporary mold by assembling at least one temporary mold part;
- (f) filling the temporary mold with a liquid material A, wherein the relation between materials M and A is T(M)<T(A), where T(M) and T(A) are the melting point temperatures of materials M and A;
- (g) cooling the filled temporary mold until the liquid material A solidifies into a temporary pattern;
- (h) removing the temporary mold from the temporary pattern;
- (i) coating the temporary pattern with a ceramic coating to form a ceramic shell around the temporary pattern;
- (j) removing the temporary pattern from the ceramic shell by evacuating liquid material A from the ceramic shell;
- (k) filling the ceramic shell with molten metal and allowing the molten metal to solidify;
- and
- (l) separating the ceramic shell from the solid metal.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.