first machines out in industry, he’s going to make changes.” Looking ahead, that could amount to many changes over a five or seven-year span, leading to significant tooling costs. “If we use rapid prototyping technol- ogy, you wouldn’t have to change the tooling. We would just print a new one, and off you go,” he said. Te customer’s engineers, design- ers and marketing staff are determin- ing which method will be the most economical based on their long-term expectations for the project. “Realistically speaking, if they go
ahead and make permanent tooling for all the castings over a five-year build, if 20% of the parts make an engineering change, it’s cheaper to
produce the job using 3-D sand printing.” Another situation where planning ahead and employing rap- id manufacturing technology can benefit the customer is on products that are made to order. “What happens if somebody’s customers want custom work? Tat suddenly changes the game,” he said. For short run metal casting jobs,
the criteria to determine the right method are the size and the alloy to be cast. “Ten, it’s also going to come down to foundries that cast that alloy—what are they comfort- able using? If it’s lost foam, maybe that’s what they want to do, make a one-off lost foam pattern and do it the traditional way. We would like
to show them the benefit of having a 3-D printed sand pattern casting and do it that way.”
Reducing Front-End Costs
“With some of the work that we quote and build production tooling for, one thing we look at is where we can take advantage of 3-D printing specifi- cally on low volume production,” said Steve Shade, project manager for Craft Pattern & Mold, Montrose, Minn. “A great example would be a
complex valve housing, which might have six, eight or 10 cores assembled,” he explained. “A variety of tooling is required to do that; there’s a lot of risk of variation and different things that come into play. So, some of the require-
22 | METAL CASTING DESIGN & PURCHASING | Nov/Dec 2014 Investment casting firms like this year’s Modern Casting “Metalcaster of the Year,” Aristo-Cast in Almont, Mich., often rely on rapid
manufacturing technology to produce fast, cost-effective wax or plastic patterns.
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