Here’s the most informative five minutes you’ll spend today. In the latest installment in our no-nonsense tech series, see how a cylinder block is created—from raw aluminum ingot to finished casting.
Thanks to the folks at How It’s Made on the Discovery Channel, we can present you this five-minute video demonstration of cylinder block casting. Good, simple automotive technical features are not nearly as plentiful as they should be, and when we find one, we’re eager to share it.
The art of casting objects in metal is nearly as old as civilization itself, dating back to Mesopotamia in 3200 BC. And while the basic principles haven’t changed, the art has evolved into a highly exacting science, as we see in this video. In the early years of the automobile, sand-mold casting was virtually the only method available for the production of cylinder blocks, and it’s still among the preferred techniques in 2015. Today, there’s very little the master craftsmen of the casting foundries can’t do with ordinary sand and their magical bag of tricks. Video follows.
I interned in the lab for a casting foundry one summer. We didn’t do blocks but it was fun and rewarding work. This is a good video.
They make them with dirt [sand], and then we try to keep the dirt out the rest of the blocks life. Amazing process. Good video, you never think about all the work needed to make just one block.