What is Aerospace Casting?
Posted on 13th November 2024 at 06:02
Aerospace casting is a manufacturing process that involves pouring molten metal into a mould cavity to create a specific shape capable of producing complex parts with a high degree of accuracy.
This process creates high-quality parts that are lightweight, durable, and able to withstand extreme conditions.
Aerospace alloys are specially formulated to meet the demands of the industry. These alloys are designed to be lightweight, strong, and resistant to corrosion and high temperatures. Common alloys used at Maybrey include BS2L99, BSL169, A356 - A357, BSL119 – RR350 aluminium alloys.
The aerospace industry relies heavily on casting to produce various parts, including engine components, structural parts, and landing gear, as well as safety-critical components, such as the rat system for Airbus, as shown below. This is deployed to provide avionics in case of engine failure.
Casting allows for creating parts with complex geometries that would be difficult or impossible to create using other manufacturing methods.
In conclusion, aerospace casting is a critical process in the aerospace industry's manufacturing of parts. The ability to create complex parts with tight tolerances and high accuracy makes casting an essential part of aerospace manufacturing.
Certification
Certification is created on our bespoke Quality Database system, which has been developed in-house over the years. Once the required processing and testing are completed, the testing results are logged into the Maybrey database for the issue of our certification.
This is done to meet the customer's drawing and comply with the required quality standards as established in the sales and contract review.
The key certifications held at Maybrey are:
AS9100 This is a mandatory quality standard required for manufacturing aerospace castings.
ISO9001 is also a standard which ensures compliance with general industry requirements.
Maybrey is proud to have attained these standards and plans to update them continually, driven by the above standards.
NADCAP, the national aerospace and defence contractor's accreditation programme, is used where required for non-destructive and material testing. Our prime aerospace customer base requires this.
Casting Process
The casting process uses new pep-set silica sand to produce our moulds.
Only aluminium is melted in our designated Aerospace line to avoid cross-contamination of the aluminium alloy.
The remains of the knocked-out spent sand and metal are recycled to save on costs and to decrease our carbon footprint, as we are mindful of the effects on our surrounding environment.
Incoming ingots are specified and tested compared to the assay disc results stated in the certification provided.
We test the mushroom disc samples provided with each ingot batch to ensure they comply with the in-house purchasing specification, which is tightly controlled to ensure we get lower Fe% for optimum results on feeding the casting during solidification.
We test the ingot on our calibrated spectrometer, which measures the Key and trace elements in the alloy samples provided, to ensure it is within the purchasing tolerances.
Router cards
The routers follow the castings throughout the process, from moulding to despatch, ensuring full traceability.
The router process control is shown and followed as agreed upon during sales and contract review. Accountability and the date are shown on the route card documentation, and any non-conformances and quantities are shown using our in-house scrap log system.
Testing Requirements
Releasing casting under AS9100 requires chemical analysis and mechanical testing to guarantee the highest quality in every alloy and component.
Chemical Analysis with Spectro MAX X Spectrometers
Quality assurance for incoming materials
Daily foundry checks on all melts
Final analysis and certificate of conformity
Reverse engineering
Failure analysis
R&D
Mechanical testing with our 0.5% resolution 100kN WDW-100-E Tensile Tester compliant to BS EN ISO 7500-1:2018:
Ultimate tensile stress and proof stress testing
Precision elongation measurements
0.2% Proof stress testing
Brinell hardness testing on cast and heat-treated materials
Post Casting Treatments
We offer Fettling, Machining, Heat treatment, and Shot/sandblasting.
Maybrey Sub-contracts NDT to NADCAP requirements, hot isostatic processing, and anodising.
Inspection
Our inspection team visually checks castings and, where required, performs a first-article inspection using engineers' blue with scribe lines.
All Inspection testing tools are calibrated to ensure they are compliant with known UKAS / NAMAS reference slips or, where required, sent to the appropriate approved test house.
Contact Maybrey Reliance to learn more.
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