New trends in cold-chamber die casting machine design

Larger and larger proportions of aluminium castings,especially those produced by the die casting process,can be observed during recent years in the automotive industry,house-hold articles and others.In case of the automotive industry,apart from the traditional elements produced by the die pressure method such as engine blocks or crank shaft bedplates,aluminium is displacing steel from structural parts of cars('body in white').The current state and development directions of the structural solutions of cold-chamber die castings are analysed in this paper.These solutions drive the prospective development of these machines and die casting technology.The focus is mainly on essential functional systems such as:hydraulic drives of closing and locking units,as well as pressing in die machines of known companies present on the European market.

A Dual Closed-Loop Digital Twin Construction Method for Optimizing the Copper Disc Casting Process

The copper disc casting machine is core equipment for producing copper anode plates in the copper metallurgy industry.The copper disc casting machine casting package motion curve(CPMC) is significant for precise casting and efficient production.However,the lack of exact casting modeling and real-time simulation information severely restricts dynamic CPMC optimization.To this end,a liquid copper droplet model describes the casting package copper flow pattern in the casting process.Furthermore,a CPMC optimization model is proposed for the first time.On top of this,a digital twin dual closed-loop self-optimization application framework(DT-DCS) is constructed for optimizing the copper disc casting process to achieve self-optimization of the CPMC and closed-loop feedback of manufacturing information during the casting process.Finally,a case study is carried out based on the proposed methods in the industrial field.

An energy consumption prediction approach of die casting machines driven by product parameters

Die casting machines,which are the core equipment of the machinery manufacturing industry,consume great amounts of energy.The energy consumption prediction of die casting machines can support energy consumption quota,process parameter energy-saving optimization,energy-saving design,and energy efficiency evaluation;thus,it is of great significance for Industry 4.0 and green manufacturing.Nevertheless,due to the uncertainty and complexity of the energy consumption in die casting machines,there is still a lack of an approach for energy consumption prediction that can provide support for process parameter optimization and product design taking energy efficiency into consideration.To fill this gap,this paper proposes an energy consumption prediction approach for die casting machines driven by product parameters.Firstly,the system boundary of energy consumption prediction is defined,and subsequently,based on the energy consumption characteristics analysis,a theoretical energy consumption model is established.Consequently,a systematic energy consumption prediction approach for die casting machines,involving product,die,equipment,and process parameters,is proposed.Finally,the feasibility and reliability of the proposed energy consumption prediction approach are verified with the help of three die casting machines and six types of products.The results show that the prediction accuracy of production time and energy consumption reached 91.64%and 85.55%,respectively.Overall,the proposed approach can be used for the energy consumption prediction of different die casting machines with different products.

Survey of the 4th China International Diecasting Exhibition

Die casting machines, dies, die castings, peripheral equipments, die lubricants, raw materials for die casting, melting & holding furnaces, cleaning equipments, etc. were exhibited during the 4th China International Die Casting Exhibition, which was surveyed in the paper.

Numerical Simulation and Analysis of Residual Stress in Machine Tool Bed Casting

A combined FDM/FEM software system was developed to analyze the temperature and stress distributions in castings. The FDM was used to calCulate the temperature distribution while the FEM was used for the stresssimulation. For practical application, a machine tool bed iron casting was selected and the high temperature mechanical properties of the cast iron were measured. The FDM/FEM simulation results of the temperature and stressdistributions of the solidification process of the casting using current production technology agreed well with the measured temperature and residual stress results. A modified production technology was then proposed. The numericalsimulation results showed that the temperature distribution of the modified production technology was more uniformand the distribution and value of residual stresses were more favorable to dimensional stability of the machine tool.