Casting Solutions for Readiness Lube-Free Die Casting
Abstract
During high-pressure aluminum die casting, a liquid lubricant is sprayed on the die surface prior to each shot to help release the casting, cool the die, and prevent soldering from occurring. However, spraying a large amount of liquid lubricant each shot not only reduces the quality of the castings, adds time to the casting cycle, and increases the cost of producing castings, it also generates effluent that has environmental ramifications. The overall objective of this work was to develop permanent hard coatings on the surfaces of die casting dies that result in no aluminum adhesion in the absence of using liquid-based organic lubricants. This new concept is called lube-free die casting. To achieve this goal, a simple laboratory method called the aluminum adhesion test (AAT) was developed to provide a quick quantitative evaluation of the adhesion/soldering strength of the cast alloy to various substrates and/or coatings. A number of hard coatings have been evaluated using the AAT. Several coatings were identified to have zero or negligible adhesion strength between the solidified alloy and the coating. To assess the efficacy of the candidate coatings screened by the AAT in preventing such alloy adhesion under actual die-casting conditions, both a coated die insert and a fully-coated die cavity have been tested in a series of four plant trials.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Oct 23, 2017
- Accession Number
- AD1098829
Entities
People
- Andras Korenyi-both
- Michael Kaufman
- Stephen Midson