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Investment casting cores, sacrificial inserts

Investment casting and powder metals pressing use sacrificial inserts or cores to provide internal features.  These features often are integral to thermal control of the component in use.  The illustration is a simple three dimensional core that is leached out of the turbine fin after investment casting.  The Seneca Ceramics' process can press 24 inch shapes and is amenable to parts approaching 36 inches with wet welding.  At the small end, cores of 2 inch diameter disks 0.040 inch thick are routinely made.

Key Benefits

• Inertness to molten alloys with 99.8% alumina or pure fused silica
• Higher strength to a given open porosity level
  • high dimensional tolerance
  • high dimensional stability at casting temperatures
• Faster core removal resulting from higher open porosity 

Process costs can be significantly reduced

• Improved yields from almost no core failures
• Improved throughput with faster leaching or removal of cores

Seneca Ceramics' hydro-plastic forming process provides a higher ratio of mechanical strength to percent open porosity than parts made from processes dependant upon organics to provide forming plasticity.  Dimensional stability is established at the water extraction stage as the particles come into contact.