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The Estas factory has its own foundry, allowing greater control over quality and cost of the final product. Unlike our competitors, we cast our cores in-house. This minimizes
the material issues that can result in problems later in the production process. It also shortens the supply chain and decreases lead-times.
The foundry uses high quality iron ores and conducts quality checks through-out the casting process to ensure that the quality of the castings is maintained.
The Estas foundry has a pouring capacity of 20,000 tons of camshafts annually. The foundry produces several types of cast irons, including chill-cast iron, grey iron, and ductile
iron, meeting demand from a wide variety of camshaft markets and applications, from small to large, from passenger cars to performance racing and heavy industry.
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The foundry has world-class expertise in producing chill castings - a method of hardening wear surfaces during the casting process.
With the chill-cast approach, wear-surfaces that need local hardening have chill-inserts placed in the tool. The inserts freeze the molten iron on contact, producing high-hardness
microstructure formations that penetrate deep into the metal, while leaving the remainder of the camshaft with tougher, more flexible iron. This results in camshafts that are both
tough and durable.
The chill casting approach has advantages that are not achievable with other methods: deep hardness penetration, excellent lubrication retention on the hardened surfaces, reduced
chance of microfractures and cracks, and economical cost. The resulting lobes can be ground to a variety of profiles without major risk of grinding away all the lobe hardening.
The cost advantage over secondary hardening processes such as induction hardening or gas carburizing is substantial, making chill-castings the preferred approach for many of our
customers.
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A chill-cast cam lobe cross-section, etched to show the deep penetration of the high-hardness martensite
microstructures in the cast alloy. |
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Estas also produces camshafts made from steel billets and forgings. When sourcing steel for these products, Estas only sources from quality suppliers who are able to meet the most
stringent quality and cleanliness specifications required by our toughest OEM customers. Every batch of steel ordered is quality certified by the supplier, and Estas verifies the
certifications in our internal laboratory, analyzing samples from each heat to confirm cleanliness, composition, microstructue, and post-treatment meet the quality requirements.
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