Investment Castings vs. Metal Fabrications: What’s the Better Choice for Your Parts

When selecting the best method for producing metal components, understanding the distinctions between metal fabrication and investment casting is crucial, especially when performance, cost-efficiency, and design flexibility are top priorities. While both processes serve essential roles in manufacturing, investment casting often provides significant advantages in terms of design complexity, material efficiency, and consistency—particularly for high-performance industries like aerospace, defense, and telecommunications.

In this post, we’ll break down the core differences between metal fabrications and investment castings, and explain why more companies are turning to precision castings as a smarter, more scalable manufacturing solution.

Fundamental Differences: Fabrication vs. Casting

Metal Fabrication involves taking raw metal forms, such as plate or bar stock, then cutting, bending, welding, and machining them into the desired shape. While effective for simple structures, fabrication is labor-intensive and often results in substantial material waste. Additionally, welding can introduce distortion, necessitating extra steps like heat treating and re-machining.

In contrast, investment casting creates a near-net-shape component by pouring molten metal into a mold formed around a pattern. This process minimizes material waste and can produce intricate geometries that are difficult or costly to achieve through fabrication. In addition, by using 3D-printed patterns, manufacturers can create an investment casting prototype within a few weeks, comparable in lead time to 3D metal printing but at a significantly lower cost. The incorporation of additive technologies in the casting process can also produce patterns that cannot be made through traditional tooling methods.

Advantages of Investment Casting

Design Flexibility & Complex Shapes

Investment casting shines when parts require detailed or organic shapes, thin walls, lightweighting pockets, or numerous machined features. Fabrication is often limited by the need to cut and join flat or round stock, whereas casting allows for almost limitless geometrical freedom from the start.

Material Efficiency

Because casting produces a near-net shape from the outset, there’s significantly less material waste, especially important when using expensive metals like stainless steel, aluminum, or specialty alloys. Fabrication, by comparison, often requires removing large amounts of material to achieve the final form.

Superior Structural Integrity

Investment cast parts can be produced to match the strength and mechanical properties of wrought materials. For example:

• A356-T6 cast aluminum can match the properties of 6061-T6 wrought aluminum.
• Cast armor steel can meet the same specifications as armor plate, including full heat treatment cycles like normalizing, quenching, and tempering.
• Most carbon and stainless steels used in fabrications can be replicated in castings with the right processes.

Non-Destructive Testing (NDT) Compatibility

Investment castings readily support high-integrity inspection methods such as:

• X-ray inspection
• Liquid penetrant testing
• Magnetic particle inspection
• Ultrasonic testing

These tests ensure part quality and are especially critical for safety-sensitive industries.

Matching Suppliers to Industry Requirements

Choosing the right casting or fabrication supplier is about more than capability—it’s about alignment with your industry’s standards. For instance:

• Commercial casting companies may specialize in components for valves, automotive, and appliances.
• High-spec casting suppliers often cater to aerospace, defense, and telecom, where precision, testing, and compliance are critical.

So, whether you’re looking for a national expert or searching “investment casting near me,” it’s essential to choose a supplier familiar with your industry’s certifications and performance requirements.

Low-Volume, High-Impact Solutions

A common misconception is that investment casting is only viable for high volumes. In fact, modern methods like 3D-printed wax patterns now allow for one-off or low-volume production, perfect for:

• Prototypes
• Pre-production parts
• Specialized or mission-critical components

By qualifying the casting process early on, engineers can ensure future scalability while reducing risk. This upfront approach can prevent costly redesigns or spec changes after a program has launched—when switching from fabrication to casting is much harder.

Strategic Flexibility in Drawings and Materials

Forward-thinking companies are beginning to specify dual process options on their part drawings—one for fabrication and one for casting. For example:

Material: Steel, fabrication; Optional: Investment casting per ASTM A-732 Grade 13-Q (4130 normalized, quenched, tempered).

This practice widens the supply chain, improves sourcing flexibility, and enables cost/benefit comparisons between fabrication and casting.

When Fabrication Still Makes Sense

Of course, fabrication has its place. For simple shapes—like a welded bracket made from two flat plates, fabrication is often more economical. But as part complexity increases, casting becomes the smarter choice.

Conclusion

While fabrication remains a viable method for straightforward parts, investment casting offers unmatched advantages for complex, high-performance components. From better material utilization and reduced waste to enhanced design possibilities and superior inspection options, casting should always be considered, especially when long-term savings and performance matter.

Whether you’re building the next generation of aerospace equipment or a lightweight defense component, exploring investment casting early in your design process can unlock cost savings, design freedom, and material performance

Need help assessing whether a part is a good candidate for casting?
Let’s talk. Barron Industries, based in Michigan, has been delivering precision investment castings for over 40 years, across prototype, low-volume, and full-scale production. 

Contact us to discuss your next project.