Centrifugal Casting

Centrifugal casting or rotocasting is a casting technique that is typically used to cast thin-walled cylinders. It is typically used to cast materials such as metals, glass, and concrete. A high quality is attainable by control of metallurgy and crystal structure. Unlike most other casting techniques, centrifugal casting is chiefly used to manufacture rotationally symmetric stock materials in standard sizes for further machining, rather than shaped parts tailored to a particular end-use.

Typical parts made by this process are pipes, flywheels, cylinder liners, and other parts that are axi-symmetric. It is notably used to cast cylinder liners and sleeve valves for piston engines, parts which could not be reliably manufactured otherwise.

Advantages

Cylinders and shapes with rotational symmetry are most commonly cast by this technique. Long castings are often produced with the long axis parallel to the ground rather than standing up in order to distribute the effect of gravity evenly.

Thin-walled cylinders are difficult to cast by other means. Centrifugal casting is particularly suited as they behave in the manner of shallow flat castings relative to the direction of the centrifugal force.

Centrifugal casting is also used to manufacture disk and cylinder shaped objects such as railway carriage wheels or machine fittings where grain, flow, and balance are important to the durability and utility of the finished product.

Noncircular shapes may also be cast providing the shape is relatively constant in radius.

Disadvantages

The surface of mouldings is typically rough without accurate tolerance nor fine quality. The technic is unaccessable for heavy metals or alloys.