Nopatech Sand Moulding Technology - Moulds without Patterns for Iron Casting

Saguenay Foundry is proud to introduce Nopatech™, a revolutionary sand moulding technology.

Nopatech™ gives you complete freedom in your casting purchases. Moulds without patterns make rapid prototyping a breeze, short production runs competitive and replacing critical castings faster than you thought possible.

Going directly from CAD to CAST skips the pattern fabrication and saves you thousands of dollars.

With the help of Nopatech™, Saguenay Foundry can produce ductile & gray iron castings from 200 to 10,000 pounds in the fastest way possible without compromising quality.

The Nopatech Process

Nopatech™ is a nine-axis machining tool specially designed to machine no-bake sand moulds directly. This technology allows us to produce custom-made iron castings without any pattern.

By using high precision tools mounted on a nine-axis machining tool, we can produce moulds for almost any part, whether symmetrical or not, small or big, simple or complex, and offer a quality surface finish that will be very competitive with traditional pattern-made moulds.

The technology is also the best way to do urgent castings since it can have a cast part shipped much faster than all the alternatives, being quicker than weldments or foam patterns.

We simply use the drawings that you will provide and virtually add machining stock and an appropriate gating system. One of our technicians will then convert this 3D drawing to machining instructions. A few hours later, a sand mould will be ready to be assembled and then poured by our employees.

Nopatech Quality

Nopatech™ doesn’t compromise on quality, saving on cost and time by suppressing pattern fabrication, ensuring the continuation of the standard we have achieved in the past.

Surface finish of a sand mould with Nopatech™	Surface finish of a traditional sand mould
Surface finish of a finish casting produced from a sand mould with Nopatech™	Surface finish of a finish casting produced with traditional methods at Saguenay foundry

Nopatech™ achieves the same quality level as traditional castings at a fraction of the startup cost.

Saguenay Foundry has always been proud to offer consistent castings at competitive prices. Although this new process is extremely fast, it doesn’t compromise quality because time is gained by suppressing pattern fabrication entirely, which could take up to 8 weeks.

We use raw materials of great quality and we enforce strict supervision of all the processes required for a good finish product, from sand and iron quality to painting and machining.

The Nopatech™ process itself can reach a 500 RMS surface finish which rivals a sand mould made with a new pattern and even surpasses many old patterns, which gets worn, lowering the quality of the “as cast” surface finish. At Saguenay Foundry, we know that consistency is the key and Nopatech™ will enforce this vision.

Nopatech Capabilities

Nopatech™ can do every castings that we can do with regular patterns. This means parts that are as complex and as big. The precision compares favorably to wood pattern, as does the surface finish.

Also, we can sometimes lower cost for some small castings by producing multiple impressions that would be at a prohibitive cost if they were made with a regular pattern.

Prototyping

Nopatech™ is a revolution for the R&D department. By removing pattern fabrication, each prototype will be produced almost as fast as your team can design, at a fraction of the usual cost.

Instant feedback is a dream that is very far from the reality of our industry. A new casting generally requires anywhere from 8 to 16 weeks of production, so each new idea presents a high risk which you may be reluctant to take; you cannot afford to lose four months of development on a failed product. Nor do you want to be stuck with a pattern that didn’t work out.

More often than not, you may choose a more conservative avenue to reduce the risk of a fail attempt, choosing small, incremental changes over radical but possibly revolutionary ones. You are fully aware that by doing so, you reduce greatly the freedom required for a real breakthrough that will bring you to the front of your field, but the alternative was always too difficult to face.

Nopatech™ will eliminate this dilemma by suppressing the need to fabricate a pattern. This will save thousands of dollars and, even more importantly, will save you entire weeks on your schedule. These weeks will let you do more iterations and bring new and better technologies to the market, faster than ever. This, more than anything else, will set you apart from your competitors and ensure a great future for your business.

Servicing

Servicing critical iron castings with Nopatech™ offers you what you need most when production is halted by a broken equipment: an extremely fast delivery of a brand new part that will NOT break again in days, but will last as long as the old part.

With drawings or the old, broken part, we can produce a replacement for servicing your critical equipment.

With drawings or the old, broken part, we can produce a replacement for servicing your critical equipment

In today’s world, you can’t afford production losses or long breakdowns caused by a broken equipment. When the cause is an iron casting, it can rapidly turn into a nightmare. Replacements can take weeks or months forcing you to repair “ as best as you can “ often neglecting health and safety issues and not getting the same productivity as the original part.

Nopatech™ brings a new solution to this problem. Simply supply us the CAD drawing and a few hours later our state of the art process will be machining a sand mould that we will fill with the proper material. Once the casting is shaken out of the mould, we can also provide machining and heat treating in a timely manner, bringing you back on line in a record time.

To complement our extremely fast production of one-off castings, our team of engineers and technicians can recreate a drawing from the broken part itself, enabling us to reproduce a discontinued casting that no longer have drawings. We can do the same for any other castings, with the authorization of the OEM.

Perfect Solution for Short Production Runs

When dealing with short production runs, you never received your money’s worth because so much of it goes into pattern fabrication. Nopatech™ solves this problem by eliminating most of the initial investment when it cannot be amortized over a large volume of production.

Sometimes, you were able to save some money on simple castings by moulding with foam patterns. Most times though, you had to choose between an expansive wood pattern and weldments, forcing you to compromise on quality to save a few days and some money.

With Nopatech™, you will never again face this dilemma since our technology offers all the advantages of cast parts without the drawbacks. We can now ship a custom-made CGI, gray or ductile iron casting even faster than weldments, with a substantially leaner production.

The part will still maintain the high quality level that can be expected of a casting moulded from a traditional wood pattern, at a fraction of the cost. It will also keep the freedom that is the hallmark of a casting: a finish product with an optimal weight distribution, an unparalleled structural integrity and the potential for great complexity, with variations of section thickness or any other design requirement.

Demonstration - Pillow Blocks in 10 Days

Two of these pillow blocks were produced for our client, without pattern in multiple impressions. It took only one week and a half from order to shipping, including an annealing treatment. Watch the video to see how.

This information has been sourced, reviewed and adapted from materials provided by Fonderie Saguenay.

For more information on this source, please visit Fonderie Saguenay.