What are Cast Steel Structural Components

Cast steel structural components can be designed to offer material savings over their fabricated counterparts. 
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The freeform capabilities of casting manufacturing provides the opportunity to create structural forms that are more directly informed by the forces to which they will be subjected.  

Castings are well-suited for arduously loaded structural connections, where elevated strength or stiffness may be required.
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Cast steel is isotropic, making castings ideal for use in connections that are subjected to complex stress states.
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Casting manufacturing allows for the production of components with varying wall thickness, enabling targeted reinforcement of the connection as needed.
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Castings are ideal for use in structures that are sensitive to deformations or vibrations as in the design stage their stiffness can be accurately predicted and tuned to suit the overall structural response.

Utilizing cast nodes in the most crucial connections of a structure can substantially prolong the service life of the entire structure.

‍With cast steel nodes, weld zones are located away from regions of geometric complexity and elevated stress within a connection. Therefore, weld access and fatigue performance are greatly improved as compared with conventional fabricated connections.  

When steel castings are used to replace complex fabrications, they improve quality and allow the steelwork contractor to focus on moving steel tonnage efficiently through their shop. Castings can be used to eliminate complex or heavy weldments and can therefore offer risk reduction and quality improvement to contractors and their clients.

Bottom line: castings reduce risk in the field and often provide total installed cost savings.

‍Cast steel components provide precision and accuracy at a level that is unachievable via conventional fabrication, improve site fit-up, and reduce rework costs and the associated delays. Castings can be designed to eliminate the need for field welding or to incorporate field-friendly features like survey or fixturing aids.

Castings enhance the aesthetic appeal of architecturally exposed structural steel in projects of any size and budget.

‍Designers can leverage casting manufacturing to achieve geometries that are not possible with conventional fabrication techniques, offering a wide range of new design possibilities. Crafstmanship requirements in fabrication are greatly reduced when utilizing cast steel connections in architecturally exposed structural steel (AESS) projects.