Lost Wax Casting

Lost wax casting is extremely versatile, cost effective and is excellent for creating complex components where fine detail and dimensional accuracy are required. Lost wax casting or Investment casting also reduces or totally eliminates the need for costly machining operations. Additionally, as several parts can be made as one casting, the time and cost involved for subsequent assembly is removed. This provides numerous advantages and flexibility for engineers and designers and can be a great alternative to other manufacturing processes. Complex shapes can be formed and minimal surface finishing is thus required for the parts and various metals and alloys can be used within the process.

How long has the lost wax process been around?

Investment casting – using the lost wax casting development technique (this reference term is due to the wax that is used in this methodology) – is one of the oldest casting methods known dating back over 5,000 years. Examples of lost wax casting in history are in producing jewellery and statues which can be traced back with use of natural waxes.

Lost Wax casting or Investment Casting can be integrated with a variety of metals and alloys such as carbon steel, stainless steel, aluminium, brass, bronze, copper, zinc and superalloys such as Inconel and Hastelloy.

Why Choose Lestercast for Lost Wax Casting?

Lestercast is a leading manufacturer of lost wax castings. We provide quality components to manufacturers and suppliers around the globe and across many industries. The most popular industries we supply are Automotive, Rail, Marine, Motorsport, Oil & Gas, Nuclear and Defence. We have been manufacturing lost wax castings for over 50 years and have built up a great relationship with our customers and many return to us year after year. Our customer service and the quality of the components we supply, allow us to retain such a reputable place within the industry.

Lestercast pride ourselves on quality, which is why we continually invest in new technology and techniques. Lost wax casting is one of the oldest casting methods available, and when this method is used alongside the modern technology and techniques we have developed in-house over the last 50 years we are able to produce high quality castings. We are able to manufacture castings in ferrous & non-ferrous metals, and high-temperature super alloys.

To read more about the lost wax casting process, please click here.

We produce over 1 million parts annually for 170 different global companies, using over 100 metal specifications, across 20 different industry sectors.

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Advantages of Lost Wax Casting / Investment Casting

Excellent surface finish
Minimal machining required
Near net shape tolerences
Can be cast in a wide range of metals and alloys
Rapid prototyping options

Advantages of Additive Manufacturing

Additive manufacturing offers many advantages for the Lost Wax casting process. The most common advantage is that we are able to do away with moulds and print patterns with extremely fine details. This reduces the process steps thus speeding up and making it more efficient overall; more complex and intricate jobs can be handled and no mould costs are required.

Additive Manufacturing allows us to test pre-production parts and re-design at low cost and eliminating the need for tooling.