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Casting isn't necessarily "lower quality," it just has different properties. It's also much older (by thousands of years) than machining or pressing, but you ca
by debacle 2y ago
Casting isn't necessarily "lower quality," it just has different properties. It's also much older (by thousands of years) than machining or pressing, but you can't get to the pressing or machining step without having an ingot, which comes from the casting process.
The main drawbacks of casting are you get a hard, but brittle product with (generally) uneven quality. There are processes (like annealing, though I don't know how you anneal a massive component) that can solve these problems, but all iron/steel is "cast" at some point.
- BlueTemplar 2y agoUntil the mid-1800s, basically only the Chinese used cast iron, since it's so brittle. Ingots would come from smelting, not casting.
- kragen 2y agodepends on what you mean by 'machining'. grinding is at least 7000 years old https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoe-last_celt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoe-last_celt and roughly contemporary with pottery. casting presumably began with pottery but was definitely in full swing by the bronze age, a mere few thousand years later