Centrifugal Castings

Unlike regular metal casting, centrifugal casting produces metal casts that have incredible strength and durability, making them a primary go-to production form for metal products applied to engines, military products, and aviation. Centrifugal has a number of benefits right from the start, including far less need for finishing after casting as well as easy to use with complicated shapes and lower costs in overall production. All three make centrifugal casting very much a form to consider for custom assembly needs, particularly in the area of machinery parts and casings.

How It Works:

Centrifugal casting involves two key activities which are already included in its name, molten metal casting and the use of gravity with spinning or centrifugal force. The process starts with a given metal heated up to a molten level and then poured into a die that is both preheated and spinning as the pour occurs. The positioning of the die changes depending on how the cast needs to work and form, whether horizontal or vertical.

This process distributes the liquid, hot metal evenly to every part of the cast without bubbles or malforming or cavities. The centrifugal forces continue to compact the metal into the die as it spins, running at near 100 times the normal force of gravity when standing still. Both the spinning and the pressure allows the cooling and solidifying of the metal to happen evenly within the cast. The results are casts that come out with incredible bonding and strength and have no arbitrary or after-production weak points from additional welding.

The other advantage of the process involves the differences of density behavior within centrifugal spinning. Because of gravity, the metal material with heavier density travels to the bottom of the cast and the impurities rise to the top as they are pushed out of the way. This makes it easy to get rid of less dense material from the produced cast with uniformity versus spot-checking. With easy removal of the impurities after cooling and a very high consistency of clean metal in the cast itself.

Three Different Process are Available

The forming of casts with centrifugal casting is possible in three different forms. Two were mentioned above already. All three include:

Horizontal casting

Vertical casting

Vacuum casting

The vertical process is top down, which is most folks think of when centrifugal casting is described to them for the first time. The molten material is poured into the die from the top down, and the spinning die distributes the metal evenly in a circular fashion. This form is one of the best ways to cast because gravity works to its greatest advantage in this form.

The horizontal centrifugal casting is best described as a log-rolling process. In this form the molten metal is poured in laterally, and the metal is pulled into the tie with the spinning process as the pour pushes the metal inward. It is a particularly effective method for tubing and similar products that need to be cast evenly with high strength and durability. It also works well for ring-style products as well.

The third process, vacuum centrifugal casting, allows the process when air, particularly oxygen, can negatively impact the forming and solidification. Instead, the vacuum allows greater control of purity and consistency, which is very attractive for part production that will be applied in aerospace assemblies and military and high stress utility environments.

What Works Best for Centrifugal Casting Production

The best products that will benefit tremendously from a centrifugal approach are those that can obviously be created and formed on a spinning axis. While the products can have different shapes, the spinning axis limitation is a key factor that bars the process from just about every cast idea possible. The product also needs to be limited in various detail issues as well as large in size. Small bits and related small forms do not work so well, and the die fabrication can be very expensive to make ready.

Centrifugal casting is also a great option when other processes require extensive post-cast machining and drive up production costs with related work and labor. Finally, and probably the biggest advantage of centrifugal casting is the uniform molding and form integrity that is produced so evenly cast after cast. Hands down, this form of casting beats out traditional pour molds in just about every category for the same products.

Key Expertise Makes a Huge Difference

Cliffe Metal Products has been regularly producing centrifugal casting in both rough as well as finished form, always to specification from customers and with die designs up to 25,000 lbs. in weight. We are quite cable of producing runs for rings with diameters as large as 144 inches and 22 inches in height as well as heavy as 8,000 lbs. We also handle multiple steel forms ranging from carbon to alloy to stainless steel as well.

Give us a call or email to discuss what your needs are and let us engage with you on the possibilities. Centrifugal casting is a great way to keep cast production costs down as well as produce assembly parts that are extremely even inconsistency as well as reliability and finish. We built our business on high quality metal component fabrication, so please give us the opportunity to show you how well we can deliver on your next order.