The ELITE Process: Why Should You Choose It?

There seems to be new developments happening in the engineering world on a regular basis, which can be explained by the necessity to remain up to date with new techniques and even create new, innovative features that can help advance the field. This is greatly exemplified in the improvement of a technique that has been around at least 5000 years, investment casting. Over time, while the essential principles stayed the same, this technique has become increasingly better and allowed for the creation of more complex, accurate parts, partly due to the design flexibility that the process provides.

At Dean Group we used our extensive knowledge and experience of the investment casting processes to develop the ELITE process. This process produces high strength, high integrity aluminium investment castings with the potential for extremely thin wall sections and is also compatible with rapid prototyping, meaning you can test the parts before investment in production tooling.

What is the ELITE Process?

This ELITE technique produces aluminium parts with higher strength and integrity, as well as thinner wall sections. Because this is a protected technology, the process is still kept confidential in our UK investment casting foundry. We can assure you, however, that we’ve developed this method around the investment casting process that has characterised Dean Group since 1972; while it still uses the same ‘lost wax’ principles, it also combines a technology specifically designed to improve the properties of the aluminium alloys used.

Quality is always our number one concern, the ELITE process will lift us to a new level in aluminium cast components.

Why Should You Use This Process?

The manufacturing of high integrity, technically demanding aluminium components is extremely useful in a variety of industry sectors where strength and weight are the main design requirements. This includes the automobile, defence and military and aerospace fields.

As well as significant improvements in the cast integrity, the ELITE process will also produce parts with a better surface finish and improved dimensional stability. Capable of being produced in sizes that vary from a few millimetres to volumes of 500mm³, the design flexibility of investment casting allows complex parts to be designed, some of which could not be produced by any other means, including 5 axis machining. The process flexibility also allows for economical batch production, through to higher volume requirements. The development of the ELITE process will provide a unique cost advantage to industry sectors that so far have only been able to achieve these high end mechanical requirements through high cost sources.

Manufactured in our Manchester foundry, the Elite process can produce parts with full traceability and we can provide all levels of NDT for process validation or for on-going production. Our focus is to produce top quality products with a personal service and at the most competitive costs. If you’re interested in learning more about our quality ELITE process, or how your business can benefit from it, don’t hesitate to contact us today on 0161 775 1633, or follow us on Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn to keep up to date with our latest news.