Nickel and Cobalt Alloy Investment Casting

Nickel alloy investment castings are otherwise known as monel investment castings. Nickel and cobalt alloy investment castings carry some of the same characteristics of stainless steel investment castings such as abrasion resistance. This abrasion resistance is perhaps the most popular feature of cobalt and nickel alloy investment castings.

Monel investment castings are typically used in the energy industry where abrasion resistance is extremely important on parts such as pumps and steam valves.

Nickel alloy and cobalt alloy investment castings can be very difficult to process using lost wax casting. The parts must be slow cooled over a period of twenty-four hours to avoid heat tears and cracking. Cobalt and nickel alloy investment castings are extremely fragile prior to heat treat and must be handled carefully. The raw materials for nickel and cobalt alloy investment castings are the most expensive with the exception of precious metals. Because of their inherent abrasion resistance secondary operations such as machining are very time consuming. For these reasons these are the most expensive types of castings.

While we are able to produce nickel alloy investment castings and cobalt alloy investment castings, at our China foundries we encourage our customers who are not familiar with these alloys to utilize less expensive investment casting alloys with similar mechanical properties.