Casting in Aerospace

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Casting Process Analysis In this report I will discuss the importance of manufacturing components by use of casting in the aerospace industry. The reasons limiting the process in the industry, different methods available and why I believe it is better than other manufacturing processes. There are three main manufacturing processes used in the aerospace industry to produce metal components. They are forging, machining and casting. Metal forging is a process where a force is applied to forge a material to a certain shape and increase the materials directional strength. Machining is a process where the shape of a component is created by incrementally removing excess material by various techniques (e.g. milling & drilling). The other process to form products is metal casting, which is done by pouring liquid metal in a specified mold and solidifying in quiescent manner to form component. The casting process has been discovered since 3200BC and the basic processes have remained with us till today. Modern casting has a lot of benefits in the manufacturing industry, which range from reducing waste to producing wide range of material properties. The processes are divided into two categories: expandable and non-expandable casting and the most used methods are shown in figure 1. Figure 1 (Casting processes, Chinasavvy) As it can be seen form the chart above, there are many different types of casting processes available for the manufacturing of products, but the underlying method of producing is the same. The other benefit of casting is the cost related to purchasing of tools thus making this process available to a wide range of manufactures. The most commonly used casting method in aircraft is process of investment casting. The process is shown in figure 2. Investment casting is the process to create a product by using a ceramic or wax mould. The first step is

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