Conversion castings are used in manufacturing to reduce time and costs of the production of machined parts. This project incorporated a machined production component from a local manufacturer and designed and produced an equivalent component using the casting process. The casting material chosen needed to be able to withstand all tension and compression forces when the component is used in service along with locations and dimensions of holes needed to be in accordance with all specified tolerances. The casting design process had to account for draft issues, shrinkage during material solidification, porosity and internal cavities formed during solidification, and overall optimization of material used for the casting process. The use of computer simulated solidification software aided in the design of runner and gating dimensions as well as predetermining significant problem areas for porosity and internal cavities within the castings. The manufacture of the mold pattern and core boxes was completed using the additive manufacturing process of three dimensional printing. Using this process eliminates the use of any machining processes for the manufacture of the casting along with significantly reducing the amount of man hours for fabrication. The patterns were made as well as the castings poured at Central Washington University using the 3-D printers and the foundry located in the engineering building. Success of this project will be determined through comparison of all dimensions to the current machined components and performance testing when put into service.https://digitalcommons.cwu.edu/cwu_met/1018/thumbnail.jp
