The revolutionary component produced by William Cook Cast Products – a valve cage for an engineered valve for the oil and gas industry – beat off strong competition at the Cast Metals Industry Awards Dinner from a lightweight stabilised antenna platform mainframe used for an international maritime RADAR application.

William Cook’s valve cage casting is an important step forward for the industry. Valve cages, which modify fluid flow within critical service engineered valves, have historically been constructed from stacked laminated plates or solid billets, each machined to achieve the necessary profile. This was a costly but necessary process because traditional casting could not achieve the level of accuracy required for the shapes. William Cook’s investment casting technical team achieved success through the combination of design and manufacturing innovations.

The production of 3D-printed PMMA patterns in-house, advanced modelling, casting simulations and alloy optimisation all came together to enable the production of this challenging 70kg cobalt-based alloy casting. Cost to the customer was reduced and lead times dramatically shortened to a matter of weeks due to the reduction in machining, finishing and jointing operations.

“It’s a casting that we are very proud of and it opens up new possibilities to the casting process, saving everyone money and time,” said Simon Alexander, managing director. “Traditionally, people have designed for manufacture, which means they have had to make compromises. Now we have unconstrained design. People can design with a high degree of freedom. The art of the possible has changed.

“It is a credit to the whole team at William Cook. To receive the UK Component of the Year accolade is the icing on the cake and recognition for the company, our staff and our customers.”

Highly Commended in the category was Finecast Foundry for its remarkable lightweight stabilised antenna platform mainframe. The four casting suite, the largest mould measuring 2.2m square, is produced in an aluminium silicon magnesium casting alloy to BS 2L 169: 2002 using gravity sand casting.

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