Newly developed vacuum differential pressure casting of thin-walled complicated Al-alloy castings

1. IntroductionRecently, there is a great demand for thin walled lightalloy components of high performance in the automobileand aeronautic industries. Traditional gravity castingmethods could not meet the technical requirements. Someof the counter-gravity processes have been widely used inlarge-scale production in a number of foundries aroundthe world1-4]. Although individual counter-gravity castingprocess succeeds in some way and has its own benefits,there are some limits. It is known that …

Newly developed vacuum differential pressure casting of thin-walled complicated Al-alloy castings

The newly designed vacuum differential pressure casting (VDPC) unit was introduced, by which the capability of the VDPC process to produce thin-walled complicated Al-alloy castings, that are free from oxides, gas pore and shrinkage cavity and thus enhance overall part quality, was studied. Experimental results were compared with those of traditional gravity pouring and vacuum suction casting. The first series of experiments were focused on investigating the castability of thin section Al-alloy casting. In the second series of experiments the metallographic evidence, casting strength and soundness were examined. Finally, case studies of very interesting thin walled complicated casting applications were described. The advantages of the described technique have made possible to produce thin walled complicated Al-alloy casting (up to a section thickness of 1 mm), which is not practical for gravity pouring and vacuum suction casting.