Here’s How an Ideal Customer Engagement Unfolds

Absolutely critical to maximizing the performance and value potential of investment casting is to merge your understanding of its limitations and nuances with our understanding of your design intentions and performance requirements. The only way to make this happen is through communication.

The only way to make this happen is communication.

We’re talking about the kind of one-on-one, roll-up-your-sleeves personal collaboration that smaller, resource-thin foundries and larger, mass-production foundries can’t offer.

1. RFQ Submission

Providing the right information at the outset can give us a phase 2 jumpstart that saves time.

As much as possible, your RFQ should include your:
• Material requirement
• Volume requirement
• Parts most critical features
• History of past production issues, if you’ve produced the part before
• Available tooling, if it already exists
• Delivery time frame
• Production lifecycle—will it be a one-time or ongoing run?

Note: If you’ve dealt with a die caster or other caster before, you might assume you need to provide a draft, but with our capabilities, you don’t.

2. Product Evaluation

With preliminary RFQ information in hand, Aero Metals engineers will contact you to explore your project in further detail, establishing if investment casting is the most cost-effective way to produce your component.

This involves discussion with you about the geometries, tolerances, material, specifications, the environment in which your component must perform, and other fit-form-function questions that enable us to determine how we can manufacture your component economically.

3. Feasibility Review & Scheduling

• You get one of our project engineers assigned to your account, specifically chosen based on you, your industry, your part configuration and various required specifications.
• We assemble a feasibility-review team of specialists from sales, engineering, tooling and production, to internally—and with you, if necessary—vet and resolve any projected issues or discrepancies.
• Together, we determine dates for first-piece sampling, usually 6-8 weeks, depending on the complexity of your part and number of services required.

4. First-Piece Sampling

• Your project engineer is now your point person, responsible for leading, tracking and hitting milestones, including tool-build completion, wax-injection dates, metal-pour dates, first-piece sample dates and, most importantly, final delivery.
• Once the sample has passed your inspection criteria, the part is moved into production.

5. Production

In the final leg of the casting development process, your project engineer works closely with our production teams on the floor to identify and solve any issues that might arise while producing at higher quantities.

And through it all, you’re continually dialed in to the workflow and able to connect with your account engineer at any time.

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