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Why Use Vacuum Casting?

Trade Show season is about to descend on us.

Major engineering design and additive manufacturing exhibitions will be happening in the next few months attracting product designers from around the UK and Europe.

With so much focus on 3D Printing, often for justifiable reasons, it’s tempting to start thinking that some of the other established prototyping processes are sliding away into obscurity.

Not so.

A great example of a process with a secure place in the prototyping technology spectrum is Vacuum Casting.

Where the 3D Printing processes used for concept and presentation parts can’t produce the required aesthetic qualities or performance characteristics, Vacuum Casting comes into its own.

During the first stages of your design project, you need one or two quickly produced prototype parts that you can assess for general appearance and shape. It’s early days so following your concept presentation, you may need to go back to your CAD model and make some adjustments.

This is where the RP 3D Printing processes – SLA, laser sintering and FDM – are ideal. Fast turnaround, low numbers, low cost.

As your product design develops and you pass beyond the concept phase, you’ll need prototypes to assess not just form and shape but parts that are aesthetically faithful to the real thing.

You’ll want perfect, or near-perfect features. You’ll also want more pieces – maybe 15 or 20. You’ll also want parts that display some of the physical properties of the actual production part.

At this stage, your best option is Vacuum Casting.

As its name implies, Vacuum Cast parts are ‘cast’ in a silicone tool which is made using a master model (SLA) of the required part or indeed from an original part.

The casting itself is done in a vacuum chamber so that all air bubbles are removed from the polyurethane (PU). This produces a solid, blemish free part that can be finished to look, feel and behave like the real thing made from industrial production materials including metal and engineering polymers.

Most PU materials can be coloured during the Vacuum Casting process to be an exact pantone match for an existing brand or product colour. Clear parts with varying degrees of opacity are also easily produced, as are gold, silver, bronze parts with a metallic finish.

An extremely smooth or textured finish can be achieved, and a range of possibilities for special features like threaded inserts can be worked into the castings.

Vacuum Casting has many practical uses including a vast range of everyday consumer and office products, in electronics for casings and enclosures. It is also used widely in the automotive and aerospace industries.

Need advice on which prototyping process is right for your product design project? Ask Prototype Projects. We’re here to help on 01763 249760.

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