Vacuum Casting
Products come out from the silicone mold with a nice texture, pattern and finishing.
Ideal prototyping process before your full production.
What is Vacuum Casting?
Vacuum casting, also known as urethane casting, is a casting process for elastomers which uses a vacuum to draw any liquid material into the mold to get the plastic part. Generally, molds are made from silicone rubber and use CNC machining or SLA part as a master pattern. These molds duplicate intricate details and textures and give consistent finishes from one part to the next. You can get production-like results including mechanical traits, wall thickness, colors, and surface finishes.
The Advantages of Vacuum Casting
Vacuum casting is an economical alternative to low-volume injection molding of plastic parts and can be used to closely simulate final molded parts or finished products. It’s benefit to make plastic prototypes with this process.
- One-stop processing to make finished products with fine detail. Since it’s copy and paste process, all the pattern or texture, features on the master part directly “paste” to the product, when it is liquid material.
- Lower the production cost. For the plastic part, this process is much more economical than CNC machining. It’s a perfect way to test your product design ideas like outline, color, material function, etc.
- Short manufacturing time. The master pattern is made by CNC or SLA. Generally, one piece of master pattern needs less than 3 days. Silicone mold is made by the master part and only need several hours when the mold is done, the rest of job is to keep copying to get the products. So if your lead time is very tight, this is the best solution.
How Vacuum Casting Works
Only in 3 steps the small quality casting part can be made.
Step 1: Make a master pattern. There are 2 ways to make the master pattern. One is CNC machining, the other is 3D printing – SLA. The most common way is make by SLA. It’s fast and economical. This first step is a key process since the quality of the casting urethane parts is determined by the quality of the master pattern. It will be copied to every part at later process.
Step 2: Make a silicone mold. Casting molds are made from liquid silicone resin, also known as RTV molds. The chemical stability, self-releasing properties, and flexibility of silicone rubber are excellent in that it gives minimal shrinkage and carries fine details effectively from master to mold.
Step 3 Casting the final part. The casted parts are made with replicate and consistent.
How DOMI Supports You
DOMI has the vacuum casting room, which is under standardized operational procedures. We have skillful technicians. We are good at scheduling confirmation. Make sure the mold and casting process iat the right temperature, and reduce the bubble coming up. And we can also help to keep your mold for a while.
Material for Vacuum Casting
Urethane resins are polymers with a wide range of properties and use. We use well-known urethane materials manufacturers, such as Hei-Cast from Japan and Axson from France. This kind of urethane resin with certain properties is similar to engineering production plastics, such as ABS, PMMA, PC, PP, PA, and so on.
Ready to Get Vacuum Casting Started?
DOMI Prototyping
DOMI has 30+ years of prototyping experience. We have seen the market change and have grown to meet the demands. We value experience and expertise, which is why the final product we deliver is precisely what our clients requested.