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Casting Process Produces Parts with Thin Walls

A western New York aluminum casting company is using a technique more advanced than traditional sand casting to produce parts with smoother surface finishes, tighter tolerances, and thinner, vertical walls. The company is TPi Arcade, Inc., and its technique is called V-Process casting.Get more news about Sand Casting Parts,you can vist our website!

TPi Arcade (www.tpicast.com) operates a 55,000-square-foot foundry that makes parts for the medical, robotics, marine, semiconductor, power electronics, and electric vehicle markets. The company also manufactures parts used in aerospace, defense, heavy equipment, transportation, and instrumentation applications. Its castings range from a few ounces to 150 pounds.

“It’s technically a sand casting, but more innovative,” said Erik Depczynski, a mechanical engineer and technical sales manager at TPi Arcade, describing the firm’s V-Process casting technique in a telephone interview. “It’s a refinement, an improvement. V-Process offers unique advantages, such as highly cosmetic finishes, thin walls, tooling flexibility, the ability to cast vertical walls, and most importantly, speed to market.”

The company employs about 65 people, including five full-time, degreed engineers who assist customers with design for manufacturability. It offers rapid prototyping, CAD/CAM design assistance, a first article often within two to three weeks, and the first production run two weeks after approval, Depczynski said.

“Our engineers are also dedicated program managers that provide a single point of contact for our customers, from their design conception to delivery of first production run,” Depczynski said in an emailed response.

TPi Arcade provides turnkey parts manufacturing services, from casting and machining to chemical conversions, painting, powder coating, and assembly. Parts produced by the manufacturer include robotic linkages; medical cart bases; wake tower structures; heat exchangers; and housings for inverters and other electronics. The company has also manufactured instrument bases, brackets, weldment conversions, and housings for defense communication equipment.

The firm is ITAR compliant and AS9100:2016 certified for the manufacturing of aluminum V-Process castings. The scope of its certification includes melting, molding, cleaning, and heat treatment.

V-Process Basics

The “V” in V-Process stands for vacuum. V-Process sand requires no binder, resulting in a smoother and denser metal. Instead, it vacuum packs the sand between sheets of thin plastic film, according to the firm’s website. The mold’s top half—the cope—and bottom half—the drag—are draped with the plastic film, which keeps sand away from the pattern in the center being molded. That smooths the part finish. The plastic and the vacuum hold the sand in place, producing an improved finish and allowing for thinner, vertical walls.

The V-Process is similar to permanent mold or die casting, but its costs and volumes are more similar to traditional sand casting. It differs from traditional sand casting for several reasons.

The process is reported to offer surface finishes superior to those of traditional sand casting by using a fine sand without a binder. For consumer-facing products, a smooth finish is more appealing than a rough surface. The V-Process uses finer sand, which leads to a finer part finish. The surface finish is between 125 RMS and 150 RMS, whereas traditional sand-casting results in a surface finish between 250 and 500 RMS.The RMS scale represents surface roughness by measuring the root mean square between a surface’s peaks and its valleys. A lower number means the difference between valleys and peaks is smaller, so the part is smoother. A rough surface may require post-processing to smooth it out, thereby adding to cost.

A customer not familiar with V-Process might assume a minimum wall thickness is 0.25-inch. But the V-Process allows TPi Arcade to form vertical (no draft) walls as thin as 0.125-inch, an advantage that saves material, space, and post-processing costs. The narrowest walls are about 0.25-inch thick in sand casting, but they must be cast wider at the base, forming a taper or draft. “Without a taper, there is no release. It’s usually about two degrees per inch,” Depczynski said.

The draft adds extra metal, reducing the size of the interior. If a customer needs that space inside a box, traditional sand casting requires post-processing to machine the draft away. But the V-Process walls eliminate that step—thereby saving cost—because they are vertical and don’t require machining to remove draft.

China Automotive Magnesium Alloy Die Casting Industry Report

Magnesium alloy is a good substitute for steel and aluminum alloy, and can reduce the product weight by 25%-75%. However, the current application ratio of magnesium alloy in automobiles is much lower than that of aluminum alloy.Get more news about magnesium alloy casting manufacturers,you can vist our website!

Magnesium alloy facilitates lightweight vehicles
Given energy saving, environmental protection and performance, lightweight vehicles have become one of the important directions for the development of the global automotive industry. In 2020, China released Energy-saving and New Energy Vehicle Technology Roadmap 2.0, putting forward lightweight requirements for all types of vehicles. In addition, major automakers have proposed goals of promoting the development of lightweight vehicles.
At present, lightweight vehicle technology is mainly divided into three types: lightweight material technology, lightweight advanced process technology, and lightweight structure optimization technology. Lightweight materials are the key to lightweight vehicles.

Magnesium alloy features low density, high strength, good heat dissipation, strong vibration resistance, noise reduction, excellent die casting performance, and outstanding cutting performance, as an ideal lightweight material. Under the trend of lightweight vehicles, the market demand for magnesium alloy will grow rapidly.

In 2015, a single car in China only used about 1.5kg of magnesium, which was far lower than the level in Europe, America, Japan and other regions. However, with the rapid development of new energy vehicles and the acceleration of the lightweight vehicle process, the amount of magnesium used in a single vehicle in China has grown rapidly, and it is estimated to reach 15kg in 2020.

As per Energy-saving and New Energy Vehicle Technology Roadmap 2.0, a single car in China will use 45kg of magnesium alloy, which will account for 4% of the total vehicle weight by 2030 when the Chinese automobile market will demand 1.31 million tons of magnesium alloy die casting parts with a CAGR of 13.2% in 2020-2030.
For every 10% reduction in the weight of new energy vehicles, the average cruising range can increase by 5%-8%. Therefore, the demand for lightweight new energy vehicles is urgent. The density of magnesium alloy is 2/3 that of aluminum and 1/4 that of steel, so it is much lighter than the latter two, which means that magnesium alloy is the best choice for lightweight new energy vehicles.
Lightweight battery packs can make outer casings, bottom trays, and inner end/side panels lighter. For example, Tesla MODEL S mainly uses aluminum alloy for the battery pack shell which weighs up to 125 kg; if it uses magnesium alloy, the weight will be reduced by about 60 kg or nearly 50%.

At present, Wanfeng Meridian, Qianhe Magnesium, RSM Group, Eontec, Ka Shui Group, etc. have made layout in the field of magnesium alloy casting for battery pack shells of new energy vehicles.