Supporting Your Business Growth, Profitability and Responsiveness with Additive Manufacturing Expertise for Metal Casting
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Benefits of Adopting the Digital Foundry - 3D printed casting patterns offer an affordable way to create complex cast parts in production volumes.
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Foundries are adopting additive manufacturing solutions to address growing industry pressures that range from digitalization and the need for faster, more complex geometry patterns and molds to foundry labor shortages. In the age of the digital foundry, these solutions offer streamlined manufacturing workflows with higher degrees of automation, improved operational efficiency, as well as significant time and cost savings.
3D Systems has decades of expertise in metal casting solutions development. While investment casting foundries have been using 3D printing to produce casting patterns for decades, sand casting shops have been taking advantage of additive manufacturing in the recent years. In both cases, we have developed specific and integrated additive manufacturing (AM) solutions that maximize your productivity, reliability, flexibility, and yield – delivering your customers high quality parts while reducing total cost of ownership (TCO).
The Role of 3D Printing within Metal Casting Workflows
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Patterns for Investment Casting
Overcome the geometry and time constraints common with conventional machined molds for wax pattern injection, replacing it with a fast, tool-less process that opens the door to greater design freedom while improving product performance. Digital processes and additive manufacturing technologies are poised to deliver massive time and cost savings.
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Patterns and Cores for Sand Casting
Accelerate production delivery, optimize parts, and reduce manufacturing costs by creating reusable patterns and core boxes for traditional sand-casting production process. Our advanced software and 3D printing solutions, and large selection of affordable materials will help you to quickly and easily optimize designs and produce patterns and cores with excellent wear resistance and superior surface finish for the final part.
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Customer Stories
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The Digital Foundry in Action at Invest cast with the ProJet MJP 2500 IC 3D printer
Invest Cast is making the foundry digital with 3D Systems' ProJet 2500 IC with RealWax materials for production-grade investment casting patterns that can deliver CAD to finished casted parts in 24 hours.
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Vaupell Saves Time and Money on Investment Casting with 3D Systems
Vaupell is using QuickCast®, the stereolithography (SLA) process developed by 3D Systems for investment casting, to deliver unprecedented speed and quality to its customers at a fraction of the cost of traditional methodologies.
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Cocuchas De Michoacán Historical Vase Reproduction
Mexico-based foundry Fundidora Morelia and pattern shop PSSI collaborate using large-format pellet extrusion 3D printing on the Atlas® to reproduce iconic pieces of local art.
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Comparing Cost and Quality of a Complex Impeller Casting Made from 3D Printed SLA QuickCast Patterns
Tech Cast delivers results of comparing 3D printed SLA casting patterns with traditional casting patterns through to final production
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Reverse Engineering an Impeller Made Easy with Geomagic Design X
When small business owner Matthew Percival of 3D Rev Eng was contracted by Dependable Industries, a pattern and tooling shop in Vancouver, British Columbia, to assist in the reverse engineering of a power generation Francis Runner casting, the full power of Geomagic Design X was put to the test.
3D Printing Solutions that Defy Limitations
Our cutting-edge additive manufacturing solutions deliver our customers unprecedented quality, design flexibility, economics, and product reliability, to address the most demanding customer specifications.
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Additive Manufacturing, From Micro to Macro
3D Systems offers the largest suite of additive manufacturing solutions for metal casting, with hardware, software and materials specifically developed for foundry applications. From direct 3D printing of small to medium size 100% wax patterns to extra-large, lightweight castable plastic patterns for precision investment casting, and single-piece large patterns for sand casting and core molds, we can help you bring greater production efficiency within your existing workflows.
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Materials Developed for Your Applications Needs
Our 3D printing materials for metal casting have been developed to fit into conventional processes. With a choice of 100% wax material for high resolution patterns for standard lost-wax casting processes or castable plastics for ash-free clean castings, you can produce high quality sacrificial patterns for investment casting without tooling. For reusable sand casting patterns, we offer materials that not only have better durability than wood but have equivalent benching properties for post-processing.
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Software that Deliver Results
Software is the key to transforming your digital end-to-end manufacturing workflow. From design optimization and 3D scanning for part quality inspection up to managing your production process, it enables increased efficiency across traditional and 3D-based manufacturing processes.
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3D Systems’ World-Class Services
From installation to hands-on training and consulting support, 3D Systems’ experts enable you to quickly and effectively ramp from prototyping to volume production. To maximize your uptime and keep your fleet running efficiently, we have a world-class service organization to meet the needs of your business, with on-call experts, field engineering services, preventive maintenance programs, and optimized equipment for high serviceability.
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Application Development
Are you specializing in a specific industry, such as transportation or aerospace? Our Application Innovation Group (AIG) has decades of additive manufacturing expertise in your target markets, including highly regulated industries, developing optimized solutions for the most complicated applications. Let us partner with you to design and produce parts that consistently meet your customers’ expectations.
Choose 3D Systems’ Expertise and Technologies to Gain a Competitive Advantage
Responsiveness
With 3D Systems’ solutions capable of 3D printing patterns and core boxes in hours, foundries can optimize their casting workflow and easily adjust to design changes, enabling rapid order fulfillment and faster metal parts delivery. Increase the flexibility and control of your operation by printing patterns and molds on demand.
Performance and Reliability
Accuracy, precision, surface finish and mechanical properties are critical factors for casting patterns and molds. Achieve the performance your process requires with advanced 3D printing solutions and materials that deliver the expected specifications, whether it is stability, temperature resistance, durability, clean burnout and much more.
Design Flexibility
Complex metal parts that were previously challenging to produce can easily be made a reality by leveraging 3D printed patterns. More efficient designs enabled by 3D printing also allow to optimize consumption of expensive and/or difficult to source metal alloys.
Productivity & Operational Efficiency
Our additive manufacturing solutions include software, printer, materials, and post-processing designed to deliver industry-leading quality, reliability, and productivity to keep your operation running efficiently. Reduced labor enabled by downstream compatibility with automation, minimized waste with high material efficiency, and reduced finishing with smooth pattern surfaces contribute to reduced cost per part.
Supply Chain Continuity
In-house patterns and molds production guarantees part delivery with reduced lead time and costs, for a streamlined supply chain without risk of damage during shipping. 3D printing on demand also increases the flexibility and control through your processes while reducing storage.
Resources
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The Digital Foundry
Digital processes and new additive manufacturing technologies are poised to deliver massive time and cost savings: Production workflows that traditionally take weeks can now be done in hours.
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The Benefits of Investment Casting with SLA
Discover how stereolithography (SLA) investment casting patterns fit seamlessly into foundry workflows and are advancing casting applications in aerospace, automotive, and more. Companies like Vaupell are using Quickcast to dramatically reduce the time and cost of investment casting patterns.
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Pattern Equipment Produced in Half the Time at Half the Cost
Learn how additive Manufacturing (3D Printing) of extruded polymers on the Titan Robotics Pellet Extrusion System can produce patterns and core boxes for sand casting in half the time at half the cost of traditional methods.
Do you want to discuss our solutions for foundries with an expert?
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Application Innovation Group
Our team can help you solve your most difficult design and production challenges with additive manufacturing solutions. Together we’ll identify your needs, working with you to optimize your designs, prototype, validate and define a manufacturing flow.