backgrounds grappled with the idea. Wrought alloys have to be produced in a certain way, otherwise they’re not wrought, one would say. Yes, but if the specifi cation can be approximated through the casting process, it makes no difference, another would retort. Fortunately, a disparate group of
metalcasters from various corners of the industry have decided to proceed with research on casting wrought equivalents with or without the metal- lurgists’ blessing. Some of them are
Wrought Alloys: T
A New Gateway for Casting Designers
The metalcasting process can’t produce exact replicas of high strength wrought alloys, but work is being done to create close approximations. Shea Gibbs, Senior Editor
he notion of “casting wrought alloys” can elicit some disagree- ment among metallurgists. During a recent roundtable, several scientists with different
succeeding. Others are on the brink of breakthroughs. For designers of metal castings, this
means yet another group of materials are available (or soon will be available) for use with the casting process—re- gardless of what you want to call them.
Not All That New Arvin Montes was just 28 years old
when he was tasked with selling the world on his company’s ability to cast wrought alloys. At the time, the company, John-
son Brass and Machine Foundry Inc., Saukville, Wis., used a several page brochure to explain to customers on a case-by-case basis what the al-
loys could do. The confusion was that wrought alloys can’t be cast—so how could a metalcaster be selling a wrought alloy? “It sort of grew as a trade name,”
Montes said. “We had internal data sheets, and there would be a lot of hand holding in terms of selling it to a customer. But about 10 years ago, we started thinking bigger. We started thinking, ‘how can we sell more of this without having to explain it all to the customer?’ That’s when we went looking for a spec.” The centrifugal casting company has
since been working to make its cast approximations of wrought alloys more attractive and accessible to metal cast-
34 METAL CASTING DESIGN AND PURCHASING
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2010
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60