Manufacturing industry is an evergreen industry with opportunities for research and development. One of the
important steps in manufacturing is sand casting. Metals are cast into different shapes by pouring molten metal into mould
cavities and removing the mould material after the metal has solidified. The mould material commonly used is sand with
necessary amount of binders, additives and moisture. Different types of binders will affect characteristics like strength of mould,
permeability and refractoriness. Binders play a very key role on the strength of the mould as well. The different types of Binders
commonly used are cement, clay, bentonite etc. In this paper, two binders cement and boiler ash shall be compared to check its
shear and compressive strength using the universal testing machine. Boiler ash is being used here to check if a waste material
can be used to substitute cement as a binder in sand casting. This substitution from cement to ash is highly necessary as the
cement industry consumes a lot