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Vacuum Casting Service
Fast, Reliable Vacuum Casting for Prototypes and Low-Volume Production: High Detail, Versatile Materials, and Quick Turnarounds for Functional Parts
- Low Cost for Molds
- Tight Tolerance ± 0.05 mm
- Delivery as Fast as 3 day
Save 30% cost on average!
What Is Vacuum Casting?
Vacuum casting, or urethane casting, is a versatile vacuum technique to draw liquid materials into a mold for creating plastic and rubber parts.
This process excels in swiftly producing complex, intricate components, making it ideal for early-stage quality checks and speeding up product development. Suitable for small to medium batches, vacuum casting offers precision akin to injection molding but at lower costs and quicker turnaround times.
Utilizing silicone rubber molds made from CNC or SLA master patterns, it replicates fine details and textures, ensuring consistency and high-quality finishes in every part.
Advantages Of Vacuum Casting
Precision Detailing
Achieves exceptionally detailed, accurate parts, perfect for complex designs and intricate geometries.
Material Diversity
Offers a wide range of polyurethane resins, simulating various material properties for versatile applications.
Cost Efficiency
Ideal for small batches, avoiding expensive tooling and molds, and significantly reducing initial production costs.
Rapid Turnaround
Quick mold creation and casting process allow for faster production cycles, essential for urgent projects.
Superior Finishes
Parts exhibit high-quality surface finishes, often needing minimal post-processing, suitable for aesthetic prototypes.
Design Flexibility
Facilitates easy and cost-effective design modifications, making it perfect for iterative development and prototyping.
Vacuum Casting Service
Quick Production Solution for Small Batch Plastic Prototypes
From Prototyping to Production: The Vacuum Casting Journey
Vacuum casting is the perfect method for producing top-quality prototypes and limited-run parts for various uses. AT-Machining assists in achieving your manufacturing objectives.
Prototyping
Vacuum casting is a cost-effective prototyping method, ideal for creating detailed prototypes for functional testing, offering precision and quality in small-batch production at a reduced cost.
Market Testing
Vacuum casting is ideal for market testing, offering rapid production of high-quality, realistic prototypes, enabling businesses to efficiently test and validate products in real-world scenarios.
On-Demand Production
Vacuum casting suits on-demand production, providing a flexible, quick-turnaround solution for creating high-quality parts as needed, minimizing inventory while meeting specific production demands efficiently.
Vacuum Casting Materials
AT-Machining offers high-quality urethane materials, expertly tailored for diverse applications across industries like automotive, construction, and electronics.
Our urethane products not only ensure compatibility with various engineering plastics such as ABS (Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene), PMMA (Polymethyl Methacrylate), PC (Polycarbonate), PP (Polypropylene), and PA (Polyamide) but also integrate crucial properties like impact resistance and high-temperature resistance.
This integration enhances the strength, durability, and versatility of our materials. The unique combination of urethane’s resilience and flexibility with the distinct properties of each engineering plastic leads to innovative solutions.
These solutions are perfectly aligned with the demands of high-performance applications, guaranteeing both reliability and excellence for your projects.
Vacuum Casting Technical Specifications
AT-Machining provides various vacuum casting tolerances, achieving 0.05 – 0.2 mm based on master patterns and part geometry. See our technical specs.
| Standard accuracy | Standard tolerance on ±0.2mm/100mm, with the highest precision able to reach ±0.05 mm. |
|---|---|
| Maximum part dimensions | The vacuum equipment can hold 2.0M*1.2M*1.0M mold specifications. |
| Minimum wall thickness | The minimum wall thickness is 0.5mm, the best is 1.5mm～5mm to ensure the mold is filled properly. |
| Lifetime of the silicone mold | Generally, each mold can produce 20-25 copies. For parts needing exceptional quality, like clear or intricate designs, a single mold typically yields only 10 to 12 cast parts. |
| Standard lead time | Depending on the mold's complexity and volume, up to 80 copies can be created within a timeframe of 6 to 9 days. |
| Surface textures and other functions | Colored, textured, painted, coated, clear polished, insert, and over-molding. |
The Applications Of Vacuum Casting
AT-Machining vacuum casting service, known for rapid production, affordability, and durable components, is preferred for custom automotive, medical, consumer goods, and more parts.
Automotive Industry
Vacuum casting is used to create detailed, durable prototypes of automotive parts like dashboard components, light covers, and interior trims. It's ideal for testing form, fit, and function in the design phase.
Medical Equipment
This method is employed for producing precise, biocompatible components for medical devices. It's suitable for creating parts for medical models, surgical guides, and equipment casings, ensuring accuracy and safety.
Consumer Electronics
For gadgets and consumer electronics, vacuum casting offers a way to prototype cases, buttons, and other parts with a high-quality finish. It allows for testing of aesthetics and ergonomics before mass production.
Industrial Machinery
Vacuum casting serves industrial applications by producing durable, functional prototypes of machine components, helping in design validation and functionality testing before full-scale production.
Gallery of Our Vacuum Casting Parts
We produced vacuum-casted prototypes and orders for diverse industries: medical, aerospace, automotive, defense, electronics, startups, automation, machinery, marine, and robotics.
Vacuum Casting Services FAQs
Vacuum casting is a service for producing under 200 functional plastic parts using two-component polyurethanes and silicone molds. Renowned for rapidly creating high-quality prototypes or end-use products affordably, it manufactures small quantities of highly accurate polyurethane parts. While slower than SLA due to extra steps, it yields items with characteristics and quality akin to the final product.
Opt for Vacuum or Urethane Casting to produce parts of a quality comparable to injection molding, ideal for fit, function testing, marketing, or limited series end-use (<200 units). This service offers various finishing degrees, tailored to match the specific finish required for your parts, enhancing their functionality and aesthetic appeal.
Silicone molding is a process that creates flexible, high-fidelity molds from silicone rubber. These molds are used to replicate intricate details in various materials, commonly for prototypes, art pieces, and small-batch production. Its flexibility and accuracy make it a preferred choice for detailed and complex shapes.
Yes, vacuum casting can be used for production runs, particularly suited for low-volume manufacturing (typically less than 200 units). It’s an efficient way to produce high-quality, functional parts with fine details and excellent surface finishes, without the high costs and time constraints of traditional manufacturing methods like injection molding.
Vacuum casting, while versatile, has limitations including a restricted choice of materials mainly to resins and elastomers, reduced durability compared to injection-molded parts, and a limited production volume capacity, making it less viable for large-scale manufacturing. Also, the silicone molds degrade over time, limiting their reuse for long-term production.
Vacuum cast parts are highly accurate and can replicate intricate details with precision. The process typically achieves a dimensional accuracy of around 0.2 to 0.4 mm. This level of precision makes vacuum casting ideal for creating detailed prototypes and end-use parts that closely resemble final production items.
Vacuum casting is highly cost-effective for small batch production, particularly for quantities typically under 200 units. It eliminates the need for expensive tooling and molds required in traditional manufacturing, like injection molding. This results in lower upfront costs and makes it ideal for producing high-quality prototypes and end-use parts economically.
Vacuum casting can achieve a wide range of surface finishes, from high-gloss to textured. The finishes can closely mimic those of injection-molded parts, including matt, satin, or transparent. Additional post-processing techniques like painting, sanding, or polishing can further enhance the appearance, making it versatile for aesthetic and functional requirements.
Yes, it is possible to color match parts in vacuum casting. By adding pigments to the resin before casting, a wide range of colors can be achieved, closely matching specific hues or brand colors. This flexibility allows for the production of parts that meet precise aesthetic and design requirements.
Vacuum casting and 3D printing are valuable for rapid prototyping but differ significantly. Vacuum casting is ideal for producing high-quality, detailed parts in small batches and offers better surface finishes and material choices. 3D printing excels in speed design flexibility and is more cost-effective for meager quantities or complex geometries.
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