By Evan Miller, Design Engineer — Kimura Foundry America

Lightweighting continues to be a priority across many industries, but thinner walls can introduce manufacturing challenges if not considered early in the design process.

The engineering team at Kimura Foundry America has recently been testing new approaches to improve thin-wall casting performance. In May alone, new techniques were discovered for our process that produced a quality product at a 50% thinner wall than previously recommended for aluminum castings.

As the customer, knowing that we are making leaps towards higher quality thin walled castings should give you confidence, but it still makes everyone happier if you are certain going into a quote what walls are crucially thin, and which do not need to be thin. Knowing where walls are thin for convenience, and where they are thin for design purposes can eliminate unnecessary costs on the casting side. Specifically, limiting thin walls to where they are absolutely necessary will speed lead times, reduce costs, and increase quality.

The nature of making quality thin walls requires thicker sections throughout to help the metal travel without freezing off, and this is something we can help customers achieve at Kimura Foundry America, though the additional engineering does come at a cost.

In order to be clear, we recommend wall thicknesses of: 

• greater than 4mm for Ductile Irons
• greater than 6mm for Grey irons
• greater than 5mm for Steels
• And greater than 4mm for Aluminum

We look forward to growing our thin wall abilities with you!