Upscaling of the investment casting of the intermetallic alloy IC75

This research work is based on a specially developed SiO2-free shell mold system for the investment casting of NiAl alloys. Hitherto, this shell system has only been used for scientific work on small, laboratory scale samples made of IC75 alloy. The main focus of the research is to examine the feasibility of upscaling of the shell mold system for production scale samples. For this reason, 200 mm long dummy turbine blades were cast. Nondestructive analysis of the castings by visual examination of the blades’ surface quality, computed tomography scans of their internal structures and three-dimensional measurements showed very good results for the shell mold system. In particular, the good dimensional stability of the shell mold with average deviations of +0.3 mm and a local maximum deviation of −0.73 mm are excellent for a water-soluble shell mold system. The results of this work demonstrate that the investigated mold system is suitable for large samples and melt weights of up to 5 kg and is thus adaptable for the production process of NiAl components.