How to Choose the Right Investment Casting Company
Today, we’re going to explore not just finding a reputable investment casting foundry, but the right foundry for you. Let’s begin with an analogy.
Picking the right investment casting company is a lot like finding a favorite t-shirt. The style or color may be right up your alley, but if it doesn’t fit right, you’ll return it (or never even leave the store with it). You may love the price, but if it falls apart after one weekend of yardwork, you’ll be back on the hunt. However, when you get it right, there’s just something special about a favorite shirt. You pack it with you on trips, it finds a home in your drawer for YEARS, and maybe you even hop back online to buy backups so you can enjoy it without worry.
There are tons of reputable investment foundries out there, and you’ve probably already seen several just as you worked your way to this blog post. But rather than only finding a foundry that works, we’d like to provide five tips to find a foundry that fits your business like that favorite tee.
Let’s get into it!
5 Things to Look for in Your Investment Casting Supplier
1) Relevant Experience
Find a foundry with years of casting experience. Bonus points if their credentials include casting experience within your industry! It is easy to think of pouring alloys like following a recipe, where all you need is a certain combination of ingredients. Still, every alloy (and every part) requires troubleshooting, testing, QC systems, specialized equipment, and a ton of other legwork for a successful casting. Quality doesn’t happen by accident. When experience is paired with tried and true systems, you can count on top-notch results for your business.
Beyond the foundry as a whole, who are their customers? Have they cast parts similar to yours? During your initial chats with the sales team, ask about their experience casting your alloy of choice or your part (be it pumps, impellers, home goods, solar components, artwork, or anything else).
At IPC, we have over 45 years of experience and in 2025 alone have cast parts for customers in over 30 unique industries, including oil & gas, defense, marine, medical, outdoor, power generation, infrastructure, rail, and many more. If you’d like to learn more about our work, contact our team!
2) Communication and A Plan Specific to You
There is no overstating the importance of communication when it comes to producing quality castings. Seek out a foundry that is prompt, clear, and consistent in their responses. There is nothing worse than being ghosted with a deadline approaching.
Diving deeper into communication, the right foundry for you will have a plan in place to save you time, money, and headaches throughout the casting process. For example, something seemingly simple like configuring a tree/gate system to enable the production team to produce more parts in a single action, saving you both labor costs and material costs.
Recently, our engineering team helped cut a customer’s lead times in half by utilizing 3D printing to bypass traditional tooling; doing so also eliminated tooling costs! You can check out the full story here.
3) Quality Control/ Quality Assurance
Nothing matters more than getting your parts right the first time. During your search for a production partner, search for one with robust QA and QC processes. When you start discussions on your project, ask about how they ensure quality throughout the casting process and check if they offer things like non-destructive testing (NDT), flow analysis, or heat treating. Every step a foundry takes to ensure quality is a huge benefit to your business.
4) Certifications & Associations
Along the same vein as QA/QC, see if the foundry has any certifications such as ISO-9001 or CMMC - Level 2. Compliances and associations can also be a good indicator of a dependable foundry.
For some industries, these certs are non-negotiable, so make sure to do your homework and ask about certifications during your initial conversations with the foundry team.
5) Capabilities That Match Your Needs
Last, but certainly not least, make sure that a foundries capabilities meet your needs. This point really deserves its own blog, but here are just a few things to consider:
Do they have capacity to get your parts when you need them?
Do they have the ability to scale if your needs change in the future?
Do they pour your selected alloy?
Do they offer in-house machining, welding, plating, NDT, heat treating, or anything else your part may need, or will you have to find someone else to tackle secondary operations?
Do they offer tooling repair or storage?
Do they offer 3D printing as an option to produce small batch or one-off parts?
Don’t just find any fit, find the right fit. It will save your business time, money, and frustrations, much like our t-shirt example at the beginning of the article.
Bonus Tip (Location Location Location)
Finding a foundry with a convenient location can be a game-changer for your business. Beyond saving on shipping and logistics, you can avoid off-hour meetings, visit the foundry yourself before or during production, and set up a partnership that works in the long term for your business.
Conclusion
At IPC, we’re committed to being a production partner you can count on for years, so much so that we’ve built our foundries around adapting to you and your specific needs. If you’d like to learn how IPC can be the perfect fit for your business, contact us today!
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