Low-Cost Investment Casting for the High School

摘要

Investment castings of useful size can be produced in a high school in a reasonable amount of time and at a relatively low cost. Exposing students to investment casting in Technology Education classes would increase the likelihood that a student would choose a career in metalcasting. The key to getting the approval of the administration is that theinstructor should be an advocate of this process and with that comes training of the instructors. There are several programs available currently to increase the knowledge level of the high school teachers in metalcasting, but actually going into the high school class and helping them directly is the best way to insure the knowledge is being passed on to students. For the last four years UW-Platteville has been sending Technology Education students back to their original high schools to help with the metalcasting programs. The solutions mentioned above will be put to use with a small mobile foundry that UW-Platteville students can take to any school that does not have a program, or needs a helping hand. It is very important that the industry try to reach out in their local community and see if they can help the Technology Education teacher and promote investment casting in the local high school. The ICI could also help to develop a curriculum that high school teachers could use to teach and decrease the amount of trial and error of starting investment casting in their high school.