The development of lost foam casting technology in China has the following characteristics:
1) Township enterprises and small and medium-sized foundry parts factories took the lead in development. Lost foam casting technology has the characteristics of less investment, quick effect and can produce high-precision castings without very skilled technical workers. It has been favored by some small and medium-sized enterprises and township enterprises with backward production technology. Therefore, a large number of small lost foam casting plants with an annual output of 1000t to 3000t have sprung up and put into operation in China. Driven by these township enterprises and small and medium-sized enterprises, some large state-owned enterprises have successively introduced more advanced lost foam casting production lines and key equipment from abroad, such as FAW Group, Hefei Casting and forging plant, ZHY casting, etc. So far, some enterprises in China are gradually comparable to the top ten lost foam casting enterprises in North America and Europe. On the whole, China’s lost foam casting has small scale, low output and unclear economic benefits.
2) At present, China’s lost foam casting technology has made great progress, but it has not brought the advantages of lost foam casting technology into full play. In China, lost foam casting technology is mainly used to produce some castings with moderate difficulty, such as ductile iron pipe parts, gray iron box, etc., which has not played a great role in the key castings of automobile with great difficulty. It is worth celebrating that at present, there are several private and private enterprises in China, which are tackling the lost foam casting of key castings such as cylinder head and cylinder block.
3) In the total output of lost foam casting, aluminum alloy castings account for a low proportion. The lost foam casting technology for producing complex aluminum alloy castings is not mature enough, and many key technologies need to be overcome. China’s lost foam aluminum alloy casting has a long way to go.
4) Due to the lack of preliminary process demonstration, the key technologies of some large-scale production lines have not been solved, so that some large-scale production lines can not be put into production, so that the huge investment can not be returned in time; For some small-scale production lines, due to the instability of product objects, the economic benefits fluctuate from good to bad.
At present, China has hundreds of enterprises engaged in the research and application of lost foam casting, and the technology has been improved day by day; In terms of single piece small batch production and mass production, it has begun to take shape, and a national industry organization has been established. Although China’s lost foam casting technology has made great progress in production mode and technology, on the whole, lost foam casting technology is still in the primary development stage in China, there is still a big gap compared with industrial advanced countries, and there is still a long way to go from the world advanced level.