THE SEWER IS THE CONSCIENCE OF THE CITY
-《The Wretched, The Miserable Ones》By Victor Hugo
Casting is a manufacturing process in which a liquid material is usually poured into a mold, which contains a hollow cavity of the desired shape, and then allowed to solidify. The solidified part is also known as a casting, which is ejected or broken out of the mold to complete the process. Throughout history, metal casting has been used to make tools, weapons, and religious objects. Metal casting history and development can be traced back to Southern Asia (China, India, Pakistan, etc) with a 7,000-year-old process. The oldest surviving casting is a copper frog from 3200 BC.
1300BC, The Simuwu Rectangle Cauldron in China with weight 875kgs reveals a high level of casting technique and artistry. It represents the highest casting achievement of the Shang Dynasty（1600-1046 BC）.
800BC, Jade handle iron sword is the earliest known cast iron works in China, which is a sign of China's entry into the Iron Age.
Around 1400, gun-barrels and bullets were the first iron cast products in Europe. The forming technology for the barrels corresponded to loam forming by means of templates, already developed for the casting of bronze in the Middle Ages. After the loam forming technology used in the beginning for the serial production of bullets, the use of permanent mould made of cast iron emerged.
In the middle of the 15th century items such as water pipes and bells were produced from cast iron. The oldest cast iron water pipes date from the 17th century and were installed to distribute water throughout the gardens of the Chateau de Versailles 1664. These amount to some 35 km of pipe, typically 1 m lengths with flanged joints. The extreme age of these pipes make them of considerable historical value.
China's cast iron pipe industry started in the early 1990s, with the strong support of the China Urban Water Supply Association developed rapidly.
With the development of society and economy, China is famous as world factory today, and the quality of products made in China has been improved substantially.
Nowadays, the world's largest producer of castings is China. The output of castings has reached more than 35.3 million tons in 2019, which surpasses the United States for many years and ranks first in the world. China's annual export of castings has reached about 2.233 million tons, and the main export markets are Europe, America, Japan and other countries.With the global economic integration and increasingly close international cooperation, in order to meet the new trend of the world's manufacturing center transferring to China, we have higher and higher requirements for the quality and grade of castings, improve the structure of casting products, increase the production grade, reduce energy consumption, and protect the environment, and continuously strive for the improvement of human life quality.