For high-volume products, check if they can be made by stamping, which is the cheapest in piece cost. But carefully run your structure analysis to see if they are durable. Our stamping parts can be up to 20mm thick.
For low volume parts, avoid processes with higher molding/tooling fees, such as die casting, stamping, and forging. Instead, use machining, milling, welding, or other fabrication methods.
For cylindrical or circular products, turning from a rod is cheaper than casting.
If milling is too complicated, casting or forging may offer options for cost reduction.
Forging or milling of complicated shapes from stainless steel is difficult. For stainless steel parts that cannot be turned or easily milled, investment casting is often the best choice.
If cost of casting is your key concern, think of sand-cast gray iron first, then ductile iron, then steel.
The two best options for steel casting are sand casting and investment casting, the latter being more expensive. Gray iron and ductile iron are normally cast by sand mold. There is no commercial value to cast iron part with investment casting simply because it does not match to use expensive process to cast cheap metal.
Die casting is typically used for close-tolerance, non-ferrous metals such as aluminum, zinc, and magnesium, but the mold fee is more expensive than other metalworking processes.
For the part with the same cross section, use extrusion with secondary machining operation is the most economical method. Materials that are commonly used for extrusion are aluminum 6061/6063.
There are various options for aluminum casting:
o Sand casting is the cheapest choice for large, low-volume parts that do not require a premium surface finish or tight dimensional tolerances.
o Investment casting has low tooling cost and gives a better surface finish and dimensional consistency, but at a higher piece price than die casting and permanent mold casting.
o Die casting offers the lowest piece price and best quality. The process is ideal for small and/or high-volume parts.
o When the structure of the part does not allow die casting, permanent mold casting is often a good replacement, which has lower tooling costs, a similar surface finish, lower porosity, and only a slightly higher per-piece cost than die casting. For aluminum casting with low-porosity requirement, permanent mold casting with low pressure applied is better choice.
