Stainless steel investment castings are normally less than 10 lbs (4.5 kgs). The investment casting process is more labor intensive than the die casting process and sand casting process, but with lower equipment costs. The stainlees steel investment casting process can produce shapes that would be difficult or impossible with die casting, and extremely expensive to machine from billet. However, like the die casting process, the investment casting process will produce parts that require little surface finishing, with an as cast finish of 60 to 200 RMS.
The stainless steel investment casting process cannot only produce complex shapes, it can also provide excellent dimensional accuracy, 0.005" for the first inch (0.1mm for the first 25mm), and 0.002" for each additional inch (0.02mm for each additional centimeter). This process will achieve a visually attractive, close tolerance part, that will need little, if any, secondary machining to complete.
