What You Need to Know Before Choosing a Metal Casting Design Partner in Avon Lake

Before you can proceed with a metal casting job, you need to perfect the metal casting design. Finding the right metal casting design partner requires an understanding of the process, as well as a working knowledge of how to find the best partner in the first place.

So what should you know going into your search for the right metal casting design partner in Avon Lake?

Metal Casting Design Is More Complicated Than It Seems

On the surface, metal casting is just the process of filling a mold with metal and letting it solidify. But in reality, there are dozens of variables that need to be kept in mind when choosing an approach for a given project, including:

• The casting method.
• The design of casting sections.
• The surface integrity of the material.
• The internal integrity of the material.
• The finished appearance.

Metal Casting Design in Avon Lake Is Popular

You have many options to choose from in Avon Lake. Despite some declines in the manufacturing sector, Northeast Ohio is still squarely in the Rust Belt, and boasts an impressive number of industrial companies willing to take on new work. You should have no trouble finding metal casting design in Avon Lake.

Complexity Matters

One of the biggest variables that will affect your decision is the complexity of the project at hand. Is this piece going to serve as a kind of template for you to machine in the future? Or are you going to use this piece as part of a complex machine immediately after it’s finished?

If you have tight dimensional tolerances to work with, or thin sections that are harder to reinforce, the complexity of your project will increase. Higher complexity means it will be harder to find an expert who can handle your work, and the project itself may either take longer or cost more.

The complexity of your project often relies on factors regarding allowance and tolerance, such as:

• Shrinkage allowance, or the amount of contraction you can tolerate after pouring the alloy.
• Draft allowance, which refers to the taper on the pattern’s vertical faces.
• Machining allowance, which refers to the pattern’s need for additional stock and machine finishing.
• Distortion allowance, or the amount of flexibility you have for some sections of the finished work cooling faster than others, resulting in imperfections.
• Tolerances, such as dimensional tolerances and smoothness of the finished product.

You Get What You Pay For

At first, you may be tempted to make your decision based on cost; after all, your project has a budget, and you’ll need to stick with it as closely as possible. However, you should know that you get what you pay for. More expensive metal casting designers tend to have more experience and access to more resources, and are therefore worth the extra money.

If you’re ready to get quotes from metal casting designers in Avon Lake, reach out to us at Alumalloy Metal Casting today! Tell us a bit about your project, and we’ll return a quote to you in 24 hours or less.