What Are the Advantages of Sand Casting?

What Are the Advantages of Sand Casting?

Sand casting, despite being an ancient process, offers advantages that render it highly relevant in high-technology production. Such benefits are:

2. Low cost.
3. Simple tooling.
5. Easy scale-up, but great for prototyping.
6. Fast turnaround.
7. Few design limitations, shape complexity.
8. Extremely wide range of materials with few/no process changes.
9. A wide spectrum of part sizes from grams to tons.
10. Lower ecological footprint than most alternatives.

What Are the Disadvantages of Sand Casting?

There are various disadvantages and limitations to this casting method. These are:

1. The surface finish cannot be particularly fine.
2. Dimensional accuracy and repeatability can be variable.
3. Contaminated sand waste represents a disposal issue.
4. Patterns can degrade as production scales.
5. Cooling rates are uncontrolled, so there is often variability in microstructure anisotropy.
6. Complex sand cores for internal spaces can be hard to handle.
7. Non-automated production requires skilled labor.
8. Automated production can require moderate to high costs to establish.
9. Some processes offer low sand reusability and difficulty in restoring the sand condition.