Castability

Castability is the ease of forming a quality casting. A very castable part design is easily developed, incurs minimal tooling costs, requires minimal energy, and has few rejections. Castability can refer to a part design or a material property.

Part design

Part design and geometry directly affect the castability, with volume, surface area and the number of features being the most important attributes.

If the design has undercuts or interior cavities it decreases castability due to tooling complexity. Long thin sections in a design are hard to fill. Sudden changes in wall thickness reduce castability because it induces turbulence during filling; fillets should be added to avoid this. Annulars in the path of flow should be avoided because they can cause cold shuts or misruns. A design that causes isolated hot spots decreases castability. An ideal design would have progressive directional solidification from the thinnest section to the thickest.

Location of the mold's parting line also affects castability, because a non-planar parting line also increases tooling complexity.