Services • Foundry

Lightweight Aluminium Foundry

Sarginsons was founded over 85 years ago as a pattern maker, but has evolved into one of the UK's leading aluminium foundries and CNC machinists. It specialises in high integrity, complex, geometrically challenging components using low pressure, gravity and sand casting.

It's core strategy is to advance the understanding and application of casting technology to better exploit the inherent plasticity of liquid metal. This strategy has been hugely successful, with significant advances in lightweighting, environmental alloys, tooling and heat treatment that are transforming the potential of casting globally.

Sarginsons uses its unique casting technologies to deliver better, cheaper, lighter and more environmentally friendly cast components.

Sand Casting

Traditional and Low-Pressure sand castings are taken to new levels of sophistication by technologies such as Smart Cooling, advanced grain refinement and localised TYE manipulation. These elevate mechanical properties in stressed zones, to cast production perfect prototypes and high performance, short run castings.

The enormous flexibility that Sarginsons sand casting technology achieves, creates a whole new market by redefining what's possible; Alongside this, Sarginsons concept of Intelligent Iterative Design enhances the validity of sand cast prototypes and their utility in improving production components.

Sand Castings are infinitely flexible.

Aluminium Sand Casting

Low Pressure Casting

Sarginsons beating heart is its longstanding low pressure casting facility, using hard tooling or sand, which enables it to produce high integrity castings and enhancing localised TYE mechanical strength. This improved cast performance is vital for accommodating the increasing demand for lightweight and one piece, mega-castings, such as automotive sub-frames.

Low Pressure casting is increasingly in vogue as electric vehicles emphasize the need for the light yet mechanically strong components, which is better enabled through high integrity casting .

Sarginsons is a global leader in this field with clients from California to China.

Low Pressure Die Casting

Gravity Casting

A historical strength, gravity casting is the perfect complement to Sarginsons other casting techniques, as it provides an optional high integrity casting option, for those occasions where low pressure tooling costs are too onerous, or production volumes too great.

Sarginsons gravity casting is taken to a new level with Sarginsons simulation and design technology, as they enable gravity castings to attain levels of performance hitherto thought impossible. With additive tooling techniques producing increasingly organic and geometrically free castings, the potential for gravity casting has never been brighter.

Gravity casting has never been more exciting.

Gravity Die Casting

Perfect Prototypes

Sand cast prototypes rarely exhibit the same TYE characteristics as the production versions, because they use different production methods. in having precises, localised TYE for production parts, Sarginsons is uniquely able to manipulate TYE of sand cast prototypes to better replicate that of the production castings.

These 'perfect prototypes' ensure a flawless validation of real world durability, by allowing genuine physical tests on strength, thermal behaviour, and surface finishes. Any microstructural defects or localised weaknesses can be quickly identified and remedied.

Perfect prototypes enable the pushing of design boundaries.

CNC Machining

CNC machining of cast components is a specialist skill that requires knowledge, attitudes and industry awareness that normal CNC machinists do not have. Machining to advanced datum strategies, finding single operation solutions or achieving super tight tolerances represents a whole different set of challenges

Group company, Numachine, is a leading machinist of castings. With over 30 CNCs, ranging up to twin-table five axis with a bed size of 1.5m. Numachine is capable of machining most castings but Its true expertise lies in its tooling and fixturing knowledge, which allows it to find novel solutions to the most demanding of problems.

CNC machining of castings demands a different skill set.

Heat Treatment

Whilst heat treatment should be avoided, if possible, by applying other processes, it remains a vital part of a foundries tool kit for enhancing mechanical performance. Sarginsons has been researching heat treatment processes and best practice for years and has developed unique techniques that enhance results whilst reducing difficulties.

This research has created a number of original solutions for heat treatment issues including adapted orientation, corrective fixturing and at the most extreme, Designed Deformation. The whole has served to dramatically enhance the impact of the heat treatment process, whilst countering any negative impact.

Distortion in heat treatment can often be designed away.

Tools, Patterns & Fixtures

Sarginsons started as a pattern maker in 1936, for Spitfire engines, and continues through it's group associate, Pattern Solutions. This capacity complements Sarginsons in house tool design, core making and it's ability, via 3D printing, to manufacture its own fixtures for CNC, Heat Treatment and X-Ray.

Faster turnarounds and alterations are a huge advantage of having such in house skills but, it is the symbiosis of tool and pattern design with simulation and topology that truly tantalises. This potential for geometrically free, de-risked and mass optimised castings offers truly extraordinary potential for cost and weight savings.

Great tooling design drives great component performance.

3D & Blown Cores

Sarginsons recently complemented is long standing sand core and mould production facilities, with the delivery of a VoxeljetVX1000 3D sand printer. This is essential for the production of the more organic casting designs which features like Topological Optimisation are creating.

The promise of the new geometric internal and external forms, enabled by 3D cores, includes features such as targeted cooling, which promise greater dimensional flexibility, and the potential to improve the mechanical performance of castings for improved performance, lower weights and extensive component consolidation. Casting is the future of 3D printing.

3D printing transforms what's possible in casting.

Metrology

Sarginsons metrology department has everything. From ADR enabled X-Rays through spectrographs, tensile testing, laser and CMM measurement. It's the heart and soul of Sarginsons quality, but also the beginning and end of their cutting edge research. Nothing is left to chance with the very latest in technology guiding some of the most advanced and complex casting imaginable.

It's not just the equipment. It's the people. Metallurgists, CADCAM and design engineers, solidification experts, programmers are all vital parts of a system designed to monitor, measure and validate cutting edge research and design.

A truly class facility supported by any number of Universities.