Introduction

Many technical papers, lectures, and magazine articles have extolled the significant technological accomplishments and the progress achieved by the ferrous castings industry through years of metallurgical investigation and process development. However, design engineers, castings buyers, and purchasing agents, as well as potential users of cast parts, generally, are not always aware of the strides that have been made and the increasing usefulness of castings as reliable engineered components for sophisticated structures. Research—both fundamental and applied—has broadened our scientific knowledge, many new manufacturing methods have been introduced, and more efficient production equipment has been developed, all resulting in better products and wider product acceptance by our customers. Neither ductile, gray, nor malleable iron should be thought of in terms of representing a single material of construction, rather, each is a collective noun for a family of alloys specifically designed to satisfy certain engineering requirements. Casting high-carbon ferrous materials ceased to be an art quite a few years ago. It is now a science, and one of the major purposes of this publication is to demonstrate this fact. Ferrous castings, if properly designed, have many characteristics which make them desirable for components that are used in transportation, communication, agriculture, construction, power generation and transmission, and in industry, generally. It is recognized that, among the manufacturing processes available, metal casting provides engineers with one of the most versatile of all methods for shaping metals. Castings offer an immense variety of engineering design opportunities and metallurgical properties. In support of this contention, the present book is submitted.