Rheocasting is like casting Pocket Warmers

It sounds strange, doesn’t it? But let me explain. Everybody knows the warm feeling of pocket warmers on cold winter days. You click the metal plate, and the liquid crystallizes. It keeps your hands warm for 20 to 30 minutes.

I hope you don’t have a Rheocasting slurry in your pocket. But the principles are the same for the pocket warmer and for a Rheocasting slurry. A liquid solidifies and the latent heat of the solidification is distributed back into the remaining liquid.

If we look at a cast part, in classical liquid HPDC, a solid metal layer forms on the outer surface towards the tool. The heat is transferred through the solidified material into the steel. In Rheocasting that surface layer forms the same way.

But then the magic happens. The next solidification steps happen within the melt. While making the slurry, globular solid phases are produced. Then, the solidification happens in these spheres, too. The only direction the latent heat can go is back into the melt. So the remaining liquid parts are heated by the latent heat.

That is ideal for long flow lengths. Imagine a gigacasting. A flow length of 2 to 3 meters is typical for such parts. A liquid cools down quickly, and at the end, melt fronts cannot recombine because they are too cold. With Rheocasting, they arrive hotter and can still be fed from the ingate. This will improve the quality of the casting drastically.

Check out the Rheocasting Workshop to learn which applications are a great way to start your Rheocasting journey. You also have the opportunity to schedule a free consultation call to assess the best starting point with Rheocasting.