Lost Foam Casting or Expendable Pattern Casting，It is also called Full Mold Casting。 It is coated with water-based refractories that are identical to the shape and size of the castings. After drying, it is put into the sand box and added with dry sand to form a compact solid shape. When the foam is not poured out, the liquid metal is directly rag to the pattern, the liquid is vaporized under the action of liquid gold, and the casting method of the casting is obtained after solidification of the liquid metal. This technology is a kind of cohesionless mold (core) casting technology developed on the basis of “cavity free casting method” patent (year) invented by American. The main advantages of EPC include:
1) The structure design of the casting is flexible, no core and parting surface are needed in the casting process, which simplifies the casting process and can produce the complicated structure of the casting;
2) Lost foam casting technology improves the precision of the parts and the utilization rate of metal materials, which makes the scrap rate of the castings decrease obviously;
3) Lost foam casting technology reduces the machining allowance and subsequent processing cost of castings, and saves materials;
4) The EPC adopts dry (loose) sand compact molding without binder, which reduces environmental pollution and is easy to realize clean production.
Therefore, EPC is a near net forming technology, which is known as “the new foundry technology of the century” and “the green project of EPC”
In 1965, our country began to carry out the research and application of EPC technology, which is one of the early countries to study and apply EPC technology. However, in the 1960s and 1970s, EPC technology did not attract enough attention in China, and its application and development speed was slow. It was not until 1988 that the EPC technology developed rapidly in China, especially in the past 10 years. In 2007, the output of EPC Castings in China reached 648000 tons, and more than 20 large-scale production enterprises with an annual output of more than 8000 tons. By 2011, the production of EPC parts in China has increased to more than 1.5 million tons, an increase of 131.5% compared with that in 2007, making China a veritable EPC production country. No matter the output of EPC casting or the number of EPC production enterprises, China ranks first in the world.