@connorkapoor: Custom Cast Steel Pulley, 1040 Steel From a STEP file to a cast metal part in Days. How do we do it? A Thread (1/6)
Summary
A thread explaining how to go from a STEP file to a custom cast steel pulley in days using advanced casting techniques.
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Custom Cast Steel Pulley, 1040 Steel
From a STEP file to a cast metal part in Days.
How do we do it?
A Thread (1/6)
Our customers visit our website (https://digitalmetal.io) and upload their CAD files.
Instantly in the browser, we run DFM (design for manufacturability) checks and provide an instant quote and lead time.
The industry average time to quote is 2 weeks; we do it instantly.
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Once our customers have checked out, we then immediately prepare the file for manufacturing.
We run custom simulations to identify the solidification front, shrinkage zones, and best gating locations (right)
The software determines the best surfaces for gating and generates primitives into last zones to cool from sim results - combining these is where we generate gates and assemble the complete casting tree (left)
Typical DFM review, gating analysis, simulation, and tree planning is a full-time job for a casting engineer, and can take up to two weeks; we’re done just hours after an order is placed.
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After our tree is simulation-optimized, we 3D print it in one shot, avoiding costly and workforce-consuming time in pattern assembly (a hidden bottleneck in legacy investment casting)
We then rapidly build an investment casting shell; we do our shell builds in ~6 hours, whereas in legacy shops, it can take 3-5 days.
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Once the shell build is complete, we move to burnout and casting.
The whole process is called casting, but this is actually the shortest part. We melt metal and pour it into the ceramic mold we created around the printed tree.
We cut off the part from the sprue, clean up the gating locations, and get ready for final inspection and shipping!
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All told, we turn around finished castings in an active time of just a few days
We do this by automating and compressing front office admin, clever engineering, and classic physical automation.
We built our factory to do this in just 4 months.
Everything we do is a solve for speed.
Digital Metal is the fastest way to get cast metal parts; try us out today (https://digitalmetal.io)
(6/6)
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