A multivariate analysis of mechanical factors influencing the accuracy of dental castings.

Among many factors which affect the dimensional accuracy of dental castings, several mechanical factors have been selected and studied theoretically and experimentally by the authors1-4). The analytical method employed in those studies showed clearly the effects of mechanical conditions on the deformation of wax patterns and castings in molds during the casting process. The results of the analysis could be confirmed by the experimental results only at the final stage in each simulation, because of the difficulty in measuring deformations of real molds at every stage of the casting process. Although the experimental results agreed approximately with the theoretical results in the general tendency of deformation, significant correlation coefficients between them were not always found due to the wide dispersion of the experimental data. In order to investigate the dimensional accuracy of castings which is affected by numerous complicated factors involved in the casting process, it would be effective and