Top 12 interesting facts about metal sand casting

Published - 15th Dec 2015

The history of metal casting stretches back thousands of years and the process still plays a critical role in many industries today, from aerospace through to energy.

In this blog, we take a look at some fascinating facts about sand casting and what we offer customers at Haworth Castings.

1.  The casting process dates back more than 5000 years. The oldest surviving casting is a copper frog from 3200 BC.
2.  The sand casting process was first documented by Vannoccio Biringuccio (‘the father of the foundry industry’) in a book written around 1540.
3.  Sand casting really took off in the early 20th Century with the rapid expansion of the automotive and machine building industries. In 1924, the Ford Motor Company produced one million cars and accounted for one third of the total sand casting production in the US. This demand led to new mechanisation and automation methods for casting[1].
4.  Nowadays, more than 70% of all metal castings are produced via sand casting[2].
5. The most common casting metals are aluminium, iron, tin, steel, bronze and copper.
6. Haworth Castings is a family-owned casting business based in Romsey, Hampshire. We have been producing sand castings for more than 60 years.
7. Our castings are used in an extremely diverse range of applications, from parts for our fire services (such as ladders and other equipment) through to components for the offshore drilling sector, automotive industries and even architectural castings for conservatories.
8. We use 12 tonnes of metal per month or between 150 and 180 tonnes per year, depending on our customer requirements.
9. We can produce castings for challenging requirements at a range of specifications. Our optimum casting size is up to 1.2 metres in diameter.
10. Our most unusual project involved making castings for classic car wheels for an automotive customer.
11. We now recycle 100% of the sand we use in our state-of-the-art sand reclamation facility, which has delivered major reductions in our energy consumption. All the excess metal from our casting work is reused to make further castings.
12. Our testing capabilities include x-ray, crack detection and chemical/mechanical analysis. Our non-destructive test facility has UKAS accreditation.

If you would like any further information about our casting capabilities, please call us on +44 (0)1794 512685 or email us at: sales@haworthcastings.co.uk

[1] Wikipedia

[2] Rao, 2003