Sand casting literally is a casting method with sand as a moulding material, and is a traditional casting process, which generally uses gravity casting, and low-pressure or centrifugal casting for special requirements.

Sand casting’s application is very broad. The mold used, initially wood, but now changed to aluminum alloy mold or resin mold due to some drawbacks. Compared with metal casting, sand casting has advantages, such as low price, high fire resistance, but still shortcomings.

The main raw material of metal casting is heat-resistant alloy steel. Metal casting is a modern casting process, and generally uses gravity casting and pressure casting. However, metal casting is not suitable for small-lot and large production, and not for copper alloys, but applied to castings of aluminum, zinc and magnesium.

Now let me introduce the advantages and disadvantages of metal casting and sand casting in details:

Advantages of metal casting

1. The metal mold has a faster cooling rate and a denser structure of the casting, which can be strengthened by heat treatment, and its mechanical performance is about 15% higher than that of sand casting.

2. The casting quality of metal casting is stable, the surface roughness is better than sand casting, and the scrap rate is low.

3. Good working conditions, high productivity, easy for workers to master.

Disadvantages of metal casting

1. The metal type has large thermal conductivity and poor filling ability.

2. The metal type itself has no air permeability. Corresponding measures must be taken to effectively exhaust.

3. The metal type has no retreat and is easy to crack and deform during solidification.

Advantages of sand casting

1. Compared with other casting methods, sand casting has lower cost, simple production process and short production cycle.

2. Because the molding materials used in sand casting are cheap and easy to obtain, the mold is easy to manufacture, and it can be adapted to single-piece production, batch production and mass production of castings.

Disadvantages of sand casting

The quality of molding sand and core sand directly affects the quality of castings. Poor quality of molding sand will cause defects such as pores, sand holes, sand sticking, and sand inclusion in the casting.

When occurs in the casting market, the ductile iron casting shows its excellent wear resistance feature. In other words, the ductile iron casting plays an important role in the field of wear resistance.  At the same time, the ductile iron casting gets a fast development in different fields. In the following, I will mainly introduce the ductile iron casting pipes.

In the project of drinking water transmission and distribution, ductile iron casting pipes have achieved great success and gained a reputation in the fields of hydraulics, casting and metallurgy. Ductile iron casting sewer pipes and fittings are controlled to minimize damage to the piping system due to external pressure.

The external anti-corrosion measures of ductile iron casting sewer pipes include spraying zinc 130g/m2, coating red anti-corrosion material and using epoxy coating on the socket. The high alumina cement HAC used in the anti-corrosion pipeline contains more than 50% alumina. And the cement lining rich in metal ions, thus provides excellent wear resistance.

At the same time, we use centrifugal spraying technology to spray the inner surface of the tube and make it very smooth. This measure effectively reduce the head loss. In addition, the outer anti-corrosion layer sprayed with red epoxy resin ensures the resistance of the pipe to chemical corrosion.

Whether in municipal or industrial areas, protecting people’s property safety is an important mission of the fire pipeline system. Ductile iron casting pipe has a triple safety factor in design. The design ensures the entire fire protection system, including valves and fire hydrants. Besides, it fully meets the requirements of the fire pipe system.

The requirements of agricultural irrigation on the sealing performance of pipelines are not as strict as drinking water.  Now, with the increasing shortage of water resources and the increase of costs, this concept is changing. In order to ensure long-term impermeability, the agricultural irrigation pipe network must be able to resist soil movement, the passage of agricultural machinery, and any other possible accidents。

YIDE casting has 27 years’ casting experience, is a casting & machining factory, manufactures high-quality iron casting valves and ductile iron casting pipes according to your drawing and parameters, OEM service is available too. If you have casting demands, please don’t hesitate to contact us for more details.