Foran

Magnesium is the lightest structural material supplying really excellent damping characteristics, weldability and superb shielding against electro-magnetic interferance, and is unlimited in supply. It has been an excellent material for generating portable electronic and telecommunication devices, and automotive and aerospace gear such as MD player casings, chassis for cell phones, video cameras and notebook computers, automotive gear housings, auto wheels and engine blocks.

The most frequent techniques to produce magnesium parts are die casting and thixomolding processes. Even so, these runner and gating processes give a low material yield of only 30% for thin-wall casting and can only create thin walls of amongst .7mm to 1.2mm.

If we can form magnesium parts from sheet metal just like metal stamping of steel and aluminum parts, we can obtain much better material yield of about 80% and possibly safer operation due to the lower processing temperature. Even so, magnesium is recognized to be non-formable as it is very resistant to deformation due to its hexagonal close-packed structure. The only way is warm forming of magnesium as deformation of magnesium above 225 degrees Celsius will lead to further slip planes to turn into operative. investment casting services

Considerable process research in this region have resulted in a few warm forming hydraulic presses obtainable in the market for draw forming. Recently, investigation in warm draw forming of magnesium to make cell phone chassis has successfully shown that .4mm thin walls can be attained consistently. Metallographic tests of the chassis have also demonstrated that there is zero porosity and elevated rigidity.

While the existing warm forming press systems are difficult to operate as they call for the preliminary building of stroke and force profiles for the certain goods using information acquisition modules and forming simulation softwares, the elevated replacement of aluminum and plastics with magnesium for handheld electronic devices may well accelerate this procedure. Progressive early adopters of this technologies would have a 1st mover advantage in the competitive worldwide manufacturing sector.