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Golf Club Casting
Golf Club Casting
Process
1. Produce of a master pattern
and mold/die
Description
1. The desired golf club is firstly designed on a computer
using sophisticated CAD software.
2. The computer design is used as the basis for the
development of a proprietary mold
3. The mold consists of two halves with a hollow cavity
that is the exact shape and size of the desired club head
4. Once a mold has been produced it is used in the
production of each and every club head.
6. Dewax
1. The hardened mold is heated or quick steam to about in
an oven/autoclave to melt the wax patterns.
2. The melted wax runs out the bottom and any wax residue
is vaporized.
3. The process is done fast at high temperatures (550-1,100
C) to avoid the hardened coat to break due to swelling of
wax.
4. A hollow ceramic shell is produced once all the wax is
totally removed.
7. Burnout and Preheating
1. The mold is then subjected to a burnout, which heats the
mold between 870 C and 1095 C before molten steel
can poured into them.
2. The mold is heated to a temperature for the purpose of
that it can withstand the temperature of the poured
molten steel. This allows the molten metal to stay liquid
longer to fill any details and to increase dimensional
accuracy, because the mold and casting cool together.
8. Pouring of molten metal
1. Once the desired composition of steel are melted, the
molten steel is gravity poured into the preheat mold.
2. It requires efficient and careful handling between the
person handling the molten steel and the mold.
10. Divesting
Nowadays the patterns for golf clubs can be produce in rapid prototyping processes
throughout the use of advance techniques such as 3D printing or Additive- manufacturing. These
techniques produce patterns after depositing fine layers of various materials as defined by CAD.
These patterns have been found to have easy for dewaxing, resulting in substantially improved
surface quality for investment cast prototypes in many alloys.
The selection of pattern material that is injected into the mold can be substitute to with
material other than wax such as plastic or foamed polystyrene. Each of the materials has their
own advantages such as for plastic which is widely used pattern material, next to wax. Plastic is
economical, very stable, can be molded at high production rates on automatic equipment, and has
high resistance to handling damage. Other than the use are limited, the downside is that plastics
have tendency to cause shell mold cracking during pattern removal, and it requires more
expensive tooling and injection equipment than for wax.
Silica and aluminum silicates are commonly used materials for both slurry and stucco in
producing the ceramic shell molds. In the manufacturing of golf clubs, nowadays zircon slurry is
mostly preferred as it takes beautiful image of wax pattern and would not react to the high
temperature of the molten metal. Compared to other silicates such as alumina, even though
having a high refractory and stable compound, the material is expensive hence suitable for the
manufacture of super alloy casting.
The improvement in the selection of equipment used for dewaxing also plays an integral
part in the casting process. Dewaxing which also knows as pattern removal is the operation that
subjects the shell mold to the most stresses in order to melt the wax quickly without affecting the
outer shell of the mold. In order to avoid the outer shell from cracking due to the expansion of
the wax in the mold, two suitable methods have been developed to implement which is the
autoclave dewaxing and high temperature flash dewaxing. The autoclave machine applies
pressurized steam whereas as the flash dewaxing is simply a hot furnace where both works to
remove the wax. Most advance manufacturing companies applies the autoclave machine as the
wax recovery is good and does not easily deteriorate compared to the use of flash dewaxing.
The preheat and burnout of the model plays an essential role to remove moisture, to burn
off residual pattern material and any organics used in the shell slurry, to sinter the ceramic, and
also to ensure the mold is preheat to the temperature required for casting. Unwanted cracks can
appear on the molds should the burning process exceeds the time limit and cooled down
prematurely. In order to avoid such case, many molds are wrapped with a ceramic fiber blanket
at this time to minimize the temperature drop that occurs between the preheat furnace and the
casting operation.
Improvements at the casting process are always being made to ensure the molten metal is
distributed smoothly inside all the spaces in the model. Most are gravity poured such the use of
air casting and vacuum casting. However with the demand of high sophisticated design of golf
clubs, improvements are needed on the casting of thin parts of the golf heads henceforth different
casting methods are needed such as the vacuum assist casting and pressurized casting. For
vacuum assist casting, a pressure differential environment will be introduced around the mold,
forcing the molten metal to fill in the thin layers of the mold naturally. Pressurized casting is
simply forcing compressed air or inert onto the molten metal to fill in the thin gaps of the mold.
The future of golf club manufacturing relies together with the advancement of technology
used in the casting process itself. The use of advance materials and high end machineries will
allow the product to be produce with more sophisticated features hence improving the
performance of the user itself.