Investment casting
Also called lost-wax casting, this is a manufacturing process in which a wax shape is coated with a ceramic coating. Once the ceramic is hardened, its internal geometry takes the shape of the casting. The wax is melted out and molten metal is poured into the cavity where the wax pattern was. The metal solidifies within the ceramic mold and then the metal casting comes out. This process was developed over 5500 years ago.
This process its very popular when the required volume is too low to justify investment on hard tooling or when the components complexity is too high.
