The calculation of cast steel parts are very complex. It need many professional knowledge to cast steel production processes, material composition and costs etc. However, we could introduce some main aspects for buyers to get an approximate estimation to the cast steel costs.

1. Machining cost

If your parts need machining process, then you must consider the machining costs separately. The accurate machining cost needs detailed working time of machining, which is too difficult for non-technical staff. Moreover, it also related with the annual demand, man-hours rate, machines used and tolerance requirements. If you inquires from several suppliers, I bet you will get several different offers to the machining costs, and sometimes, they have very large different. So, it is too difficult for non-technical staff to estimate the machining costs.

2. Material composition

According to your required material grades and standard, we could know their material composition, e.g. the content of carbon, silicon, manganese, sulfur, phosphorus, chrome, molybdenum, nickel, copper etc. So, the steel foundries could calculate the unit cost per ton according to their percentage of composition. This unit cost will be the basic cost to the materials. Of course, you need to know the prices of these materials, especially the expensive alloys such as Cr, Mo and Ni.

3. Production process

Normally, for the cast steel, they usually could be produced by sand casting process, shell molding process, lost wax investment casting process by water glass or silica sol.

In China, making cast steel by shell molding process is not as common as overseas. Actually, it is seldom.

Sand casting is the cheapest production method, but it is suitable to produce middle and large sizes of steel castings with low requirements to the dimension tolerances and surface qualities.

Investment casting processes are suitable for small steel castings with high requirements, but water glass investment casting is more costly than sand casting process, and silicon sol investment casting is more expensive than water glass casting.

Therefore, you need to choose the suitable casting process according to the sizes, weights, complexity, dimensional tolerances and surface quality requirements. The most important differences are size and tolerance. Different production process will cause different production cost.

In addition, there are many other factors that affect the cast steel cost, such as annual demand, extra heat treatment, surface coating and painting etc.

When you read to here, you must still be confused to how to calculate the cast steel cost. Actually, the estimation need professional experiences and specific steel castings, but at least you could know what are affecting the cast steel prices, moreover, on the website of Dandong Foundry in China, you could know the latest cast steel prices by sand casting process.

This article was from Dandong Foundry. For the whole article, please check Dandong Foundry Blog.