This permanent mold-cast piece replaced a bent tube/weldment design for a dental chair arm. Casting the piece helped meet customer demand for a high-end product.


ber had to be kept in inventory for production and service requirements. Monarch worked with its customer to reduce the number of parts, optimize part strength and lower tooling and part costs. In the end, the customer converted its family of weldments into three castings used across equipment


such as field cultivators, solid finish- ers, chisel plows and disc chisels. Tis provided an average reduction to cost of 30%, greater dimensional stability, improved aesthetics, and more plant capacity in the customer’s welding and fabrication departments.


4. Requires an excess of machining.


Machining time is not inexpensive


or particularly quick. Creating a design that reduces or eliminates the need for CNC machining frees up the equip- ment for other parts. In the case of an originally machined-from-billet steel part used in a piece of machinery, producing it in the investment casting process freed up valuable machine capacity for other critical applications. Te conversion resulted in a 22% cost reduction. It also meant as-cast internal heat transfer capabilities could be added which were not pos- sible when machining from solid. Te casting supplier, Signicast Investment Castings (Hartford, Wisconsin) was able to incorporate a cooling internal passage with a turbine style directional cooling flow feature and rib features that enabled the part to be cast in steel rather than copper, which would have cost more with lower wear resistance.


5. The assembly is labor-intensive.


The cast version (foreground) of this pivot arm for agriculture equipment freed up 71 minutes of shop capacity per unit.


20 | METAL CASTING DESIGN & PURCHASING | Mar/Apr 2017 A planter row unit for farm machinery was originally made as a


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