While there are several specific casting techniques in use to produce cast iron parts, all follow this basic procedure of heating, molding, cooling and ejecting. Read More…
Leading Manufacturers
Modern Aluminum Castings Co., Inc.
Terre Haute, IN | 800-467-6252Modern Aluminum Castings Co., Inc. has been a designer and manufacturer of aluminum and iron castings since 1919. Industries served include the sporting goods, medical devices, industrial machinery, HVAC, automotive, electrical lighting, appliance, and construction industries. Other services include forgings, stampings, custom machined components, and others.
Rolar Products, Inc.
Muskegon, MI | 231-739-6313Rolar Products is a job shop that manufactures products using automatic screw machines, CNC turning & milling, broaching, honing & gear cutting (hobbing) from bar stock, forgings & castings. Materials used include low & high carbon steels, aluminum, bronze, brass & burn outs. We are very diversified and produce excellent quality from an 18,000 sq. ft. facility.
BCI Solutions
Bremen, IN | 800-837-2411As a foundry & machine shop, BCI Solutions continues to grow and diversify. Customers receive world class green sand casting and precision CNC machining under one roof! Founded in 1939 with an emphasis on using recycled ferrous material, we are a fourth-generation family business that produces complete assembled, precision gray, and ductile iron castings.
Impro Industries USA, Inc.
Diamond Bar, CA | 877-484-6776Impro Industries is globally recognized as a leading provider of high-precision, high-complexity, and mission-critical casting and machined components. Industries served include automotive, aerospace, medical, and many mor. Our team is dedicated to the quality of our every project, ensuring the highest customer satisfaction. Contact us today to learn more about our grey iron casting capabilities.
Elyria Foundry
Elyria, OH | 440-322-4657Ever since our founding in 1905, it has been Elyria’s focus to put our customers first by providing high-quality, complex grey iron castings. We have a broad range of molding capabilities, enabling us to be flexible, cost-effective, and tailor our components to our customers’ needs. Elyria Foundry is ISO 9001:2008 certified.
Craft Pattern & Mold, Inc.
Montrose, MN | 763-675-3169Craft Pattern & Mold, Inc. has been a leader in the grey iron casting industry since 1983. Our team is dedicated to designing and manufacturing innovative products that fit the needs of our customers. Industries we serve include electronics, medical, aerospace, automotive, and industrial.
Cast Iron - MES Inc.There are two predominant types of cast iron, those being grey iron and white iron. The former has a graphitic structure, the deflection of which provides the namesake color on fracture surfaces. White iron, however, has small white deposits of cementite rather than being completely pallid. The main differences between the two are silicone content and cooling times, both of which have a significant impact on the physical and mechanical behavior of the alloy.
White iron has a low carbon content and is cooled at a fast rate to produce a brittle cast part with good hardness and abrasion resistance. These are used in a number of wear applications such as slurry pumps, liners, grinding mills and pulverizers. Grey iron castings on the other hand are produced through the slow cooling of high carbon iron alloys and are less brittle allowing their use as crankshafts, support beams, engine blocks and more.
In addition to these two types, iron foundries and metallurgical engineers continue to develop more malleable and ductile irons that exhibit the beneficial characteristics of cast iron, but with significant reductions to brittleness due to a spheroid rather than flaked internal structure. These specialized alloys are becoming increasingly common in the industrial world.
Although pure iron is found only in meteorites, the element is one of the most abundant on Earth making up 5% of the crust and 35% of the total mass. Mining operations extract the element from iron ore and oxides such as magnetite, hematite, limonite, goethite and siderite which contain high levels of iron. These oxides are smelted to produce what is known as pig iron, the base material for cast iron.
The stock forms are heated in a special blast furnace known as a cupola. Scrap iron and steel are added to the molten mixture to produce cast iron. Once in a molten state this metal is poured into a cast where it is cooled at controlled rates before a finished or near finished part is ejected or extracted. Some of the more popular methods used today for iron castings are die casting, centrifugal casting and sand casting.
Die casting is used to manufacture complex parts at high production rates, centrifugal casting creates cylindrical parts and sand casting uses expendable synthetic or natural sand molds to create rough parts. These processes result in easily machined cast iron components with high compression strength, low melting points, good thermal conductivity and energy dissipation, wear resistance and fluidity.
