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Polyurethane Vacuum Casting
Vacuum Casting Parts
Vacuum Casting Service Vacuum casting technology offers a wide variety of materials to facilitate the creation of cast urethane parts, typically for functional test, pre-production evaluation and low volume production. Cast urethane parts are quick and inexpensive without the need to invest any metal tooling when quantities are only dozens of short runs, and can be delivered within weeks in most instances.

What Is Vacuum Casting? Vacuum casting (also known as polyurethane casting) can be used to closely simulate final injection molded parts or finished products. Generally, molds are made from silicone rubber and use a CNC or SLA part as a master pattern. These molds duplicate details and textures and give consistent finishes from one part to the next. You can get production-like results including mechanical traits, colors, and finishes.
 Advantages Of Vacuum Casting


· Low cost for molds. It does not require investment in expensive hard tooling.

· It is an excellent way for testing multiple variations of a prototype design for rapid product development.

· Many types of polyurethane resins are available for casting, including overmolding

· Cast copies are highly accurate with excellent surface texture

· Molds are extremely durable, which can produce up to 20 copies

· Perfect for engineering models, samples, rapid prototypes, bridge to production

Vacuum Casting Process

There are three steps to making polyurethane vacuum cast parts: making the master pattern, making molds and casting the parts.

Step 1. Master Patterns

Patterns are 3D solids of your CAD designs. They are usually made by CNC machining or with 3D plastic printing such as SLA/SLS. You can supply your own patterns or we can make them for you. Master patterns are typically made of the plastic or metal. They have to be able to stand up a temperature of 40°C of curing for an extended period.

Step 2. Making the Molds

Casting molds are made from liquid silicone. This silicone is poured around the master pattern inside of a casting box, and then allowed to cure in an oven for 16 hours. When it is fully cured, the casting box will be opened up along the parting line and the original master mold can be removed. There will be a hollow cavity in the mold which is an exact reverse image of the original one.

Step 3. Casting Copies


Your choice of casting resins can now be poured into the empty cavity to create a highly accurate copy of the original. It’s even possible to overmold with two or more materials.  Once the cavity is filled, it will be placed into a vacuum chamber and the liquid plastic will be

poured into all of the recesses of the mold, ensuring exact conformity to the original shape. Silicone molds are typically good for 20

or so copies of the master pattern.


Low Volume Manufacturing

The vacuum casting is perfect for high quality plastic prototypes. When volumes do not justify investment in injection molding and short run production

parts,it can complete weeks before production tooling is ready. Our advanced manufacturing services help you to create custom and complex production

parts in low volumes faster than traditional tooling and molding.

Color & Texture Studies

The casting part can be a full set aesthetic model with various colors, textures and finishes under the same design idea. If having no idea about what color would be the most suitable for a product, you can make a silicone mold to produce 10-15 castings and paint each with your design colors and textures to discuss internally during meeting among design departments or even management meetings.


FAQ

What makes Ucreated's vacuum casting service unique?

Our vacuum casting service is noted for its exceptional quality and speed. We can also further enhance your parts with a suite of finishing services including machining, bead blasting, printing, painting and more.

Our technicians have decades of experience with the latest technologies to produce exceptional prototypes and engineering models quickly.

Can Ucreated provide design services, industrial design support or product development support as an extension of its vacuum casting services?

Yes.To supplement our vacuum casting services, we provide a turnkey service with design-for-manufacturing support. We have professional partner team in the industry design who can do that. We also offer simple assembly services to meet your needs.

What are Ucreated's quality standards for its vacuum casting services?

To make sure the highest standard of quality for all of your finished parts, our team carry out a strict quality control process. This starts with the verification and testing of all materials. During production, we typically control temperature, humidity and other processing conditions to maintain the highest degree of consistency in your parts.

How do I get a quote for Ucreated's vacuum casting services?

We make it easy to get a fast quotation. Just feel free to send our project team with 3D drawings and product details and we’ll send you quotation within 24 hrs. or less.