This User Guide will teach you how to use our cast steel casting price calculator.
1. Material Grade
Most of alloy cast steel will have the alloy Chrome (Cr), Molybdenum (Mo), Nickel (Ni) and
Copper (Cu). These alloy compositions will affect their casting prices directly, so you must input
their composition (percentage) into our calculator.
You could search Google to get the chemical composition for your alloy, for example, as for
stainless steel 316, you could see its chemical composition is Ni 10.00-14.00, Cr 16.00-18.00, Mo
2.00-3.00. So, you could input our calculator by Ni as 14.00, Cr as 18.00, Mo 3.00.
As for the carbon steel, such as mild steel, medium-carbon steel and high-carbon steel, they do not
have certain alloy composition, so you do not need to input any alloy composition, just leave this
area as blank.
2. Casting Weight
If you want to get the unit price USD/pcs, then you have to input the unit weight. You may get the
unit weight from drawings, after input the unit weight, you need to tell our calculator what unit
weight it is. You could choose "Raw casting weight" or "Finish weight".
"Raw casting weight" means the weight for castings before machining, or do not need any
machining.
"Finish weight" means the weight for machined casting parts, or the castings after machining
process. So, if the castings need further machining works, then the "Finish weight" will be lighter
than "Raw casting weight".
Normally, if you get the unit weight from casting drawing, then it should be raw casting weight,
but if you get the weight from machining drawing, then it should be the "Finish weight".
If you are not sure about what unit weight you get, then, as our Dandong Hengrui Foundry's experience, most of them are "Finish weight".
Be careful, this choice will affect the unit weight about 10% or 20%, so you must choose it
carefully.
3. Complexity of Castings
DANDONG IRON CASTING GROUP
The complexity of the castings will affect their prices. The complex castings will need more
materials to make sand cores, and also more works for sand cores making and assembly. Also will
cause higher defective rates. All these will affect their prices.
Please choose one as your judgment to the complexity of your casting parts.
"Very Simple" means your casting parts are very simple. Simple shape, no complex inside
structures, such as simple plate, rings, balls. Most of counter weights could be taken as very
simple.
"Normal" means the casting parts only have one hole or simple inside structure.
"Complex" means the casting parts have complex inside or outside designs, many characters. Not
very easy to make.
"Very Complexity" means the casting parts are very complex, choose this carefully, because it will
affect the casting prices seriously.
If you are not sure about its complexity, you are better to choose "Normal" or "Complex".
4. Selection of Casting Process
As for the steel castings, there are several different casting processes, or called as casting
production methods. The casting processes will affect the casting prices very seriously, choosing
the suitable casting process will be very important.
If you do not have high requirements to the surface quality and dimensional tolerance, then you
could choose the sand casting process, which is the cheapest one. Plus, if your casting part is over
100 kg per piece, then you will have to choose the sand casting process.
If you have certain requirements to the surface quality and dimensional tolerance, you could
choose the lost wax investment casting process by water glass material. This casting process is
much better than sand casting process, but its price is not low and it can not be used to produce
steel castings over 100 kg normally.
If you have very high requirements to the surface quality and very high dimensional tolerance,
then you could choose the lost wax investment casting process by silica sol material. This casting
process could produce perfect steel castings, however, it can not be used to produce large castings
over 50 kg, and its prices are extremely high. Do not choose it as long as you are sure you need it.
For the difference of these casting processes, you could refer to our article Sand Casting vs. Water
Glass Investment Casting vs. Silica Sol Precision Casting
DANDONG IRON CASTING GROUP
5. Machining Description
Dandong Iron Casting Foundry's casting price calculator could help you to get the machining costs.
Of course,the accurate machining cost is very difficult to get unless you are very professional machining engineer, so our calculator is just help you to get the approximate costs.
If you just need raw castings, or the castings do not need further machining, then you should
choose "No Machining".
You could check how many positions or surfaces will need machining, if there are many
machining positions and surfaces, then you could take it as complex or very complex.
If your casting parts need CNC centers, or very high accurate machining, then you may choose
complex or very complex.
If you think there are not many machining positions, or the tolerance is not very high, then you
could choose the "Normal Machining".
But please notice that the different machining complexity will affect the machining costs very
seriously, so please choose it carefully.
6. Surface Painting and Coating
If you want foundry to paint them or do some certain surface coatings, then you could choose the
painting method accordingly.
7. Packing and Delivery to Local Seaport
Packing cost means our Dandong Foundry will pack them into fumigation-free plywood crates.
We will also deliver them to our local Dalian port, then they will be ready for shipment. This is
FOB China terms.
If you want us to pack them and deliver them to the local seaport, then you could choose the
options accordingly.
Now, please click the button "Price Calculation", then you will see the prices for the casting price,
machining price, paint & coating price, packing & delivery cost, and total price.
By the way, the Price Index FG, and RG are only used by us to adjust the prices according to the
current material and manpower costs. The exchange rate will be adjusted by us too. So, the users
do not need to care about these data.