Case Study: Precision Airset Sand Casting

Transcript

Today, we would like to take the opportunity for a quick, little case study example of the casting process that we offer by our no-bake sand molding. Perhaps by now you have seen the process in action down there with our foundry team.

Today, we have brought along a part that we have done for Mitsubishi North America for the 2006 Spyder Eclipse. This is actually one of the linkage arms for the convertible top assembly; one of about a dozen parts we have made in mirror image from the front to the brow of the vehicle, in the application.

The no-bake process--in this case SLA origin tooling--in which we reverse engineered the process plan, partnering with the OEM designers to develop the best approach for the part, led to tooling creation in about two to three weeks and finish machined samples in approximately six {weeks}. In this case, tooling equipment would been in the approximately $10,000 to $12,000 range, and in the low- volume order that we were running, this would have been approximately a $285 to $325 part in the finished assembly.

The no-bake sand mold media gives great structural integrity to the geometry. This is a loaded part carrying the up and down weight load of the top when it is being deployed or retracted. In this case we are still able to pour relatively thin walled geometries like the pressure die casting process...in production,{ there are several} 3 millimeter walls sections.

Lastly, in regards to the tooling technique for no-bake or any of the processes we offer here at Armstrong relatively are easily modified as the OEM designer sees the next improvement design opportunities after they see the samples.