During the past several months, we all have had our lives affected not only in Canada, and North America, but also around the world by Covid-19. With the current pandemic of this deadly virus, increasing awareness and supporting the implementation of antimicrobial/antibacterial materials is imperative for our industry. Therefore, we wanted to share some information that may, and should be of interest, specifically the Antimicrobial benefits of Copper and its alloys.

For more than 5000 years civilizations around the world have acknowledged, and understood the health benefits that Copper possesses. It is a self sterilizing, antimicrobial element. Copper, Brass, and Bronze kill greater than 99.9% of many bacteria within 2 hours of exposure, and will continue to kill bacteria offering long term protection whereas “Antimicrobial coatings” are fragile, and can deteriorate wearing off over time.

Sand casting is an extremely flexible process that can benefit from economies of scale when large production runs are needed but is also reasonably flexible to produce complex parts that usually replace several assembled and/or welded components.

Molds produced with silica sand have enough temperature resistance and mechanical strength to cast nearly every metal used in engineering like bronze, brass, aluminium, steels or cast irons.

The occurrence of defects in sand-castings is usually higher than other manufacturing methods due to the sheer number variables that come into play during the process.

In foundries, turbulence during mold filling, contact of molten metal with a (usually cold and damp) sand mold and subsequent solidification means that there are many opportunities for something to go wrong.

Consequently, when sand-casting is compared to more controllable manufacturing operations such as machining or plastic injection molding, the rate of defect occurrence is usually higher by one or two orders of magnitude.

Sand casting is an extremely flexible process that allows for production runs ranging from a single prototype or replacement casting (one-off) to outputs of thousands of units per month.

Binder and base sand selection are critical to minimize the upfront capital expenditure and price per unit, it’s important that designers and buyers are aware of the options to arrive in an optimum solution.