Squeeze casting (liquid forging) technology has been paid attention to by the industry, and has made great progress in recent years. The author introduces the latest development at home and abroad from four aspects of industrial scale, process technology, material application and tooling equipment, and discusses the existing problems.
Squeeze casting technology was invented by the Soviet Union in 1937. It was introduced into China and other countries in the 1950s and 1960s. In the 1980s, Japan Yubu company developed HVSC and VSC series squeeze casting machines successfully, which made the squeeze casting process develop rapidly in Japan, Europe and America. Up to now, Japan Yubu company has sold 307 extrusion casting machines, with the maximum closing force of the equipment reaching 35000 kn. Toyota’s wheel hub factory has 14 sets of vsc1500-vsc1800 squeeze casting equipment, which has formed an annual production capacity of 4 million high-grade automobile aluminum wheels and 1.2 million composite pistons, and has been used in 23 kinds of vehicles.
In addition, Nissan, Mazda, art, u-mold, Tosei and other companies in Japan and SPX, amcast and other companies in the United States also have squeeze casting plants or workshops. In China, squeeze casting has been developed since 1960s. In the 1990s, with the rapid development of motorcycle industry, a great leap has taken place. The aluminum wheel hub alone has formed an annual production capacity of 3 million. However, due to the market, profit, technology and quality at that time, the production scale of squeeze casting soon came down. In the past 10 years, China’s squeeze casting industry has developed steadily. At present, there are more than 100 extrusion casting equipment in operation in China.
Since the 1960s, the author has studied the squeeze casting process. So far, there are more than 80 varieties and more than 200 specifications of the products developed and mass produced by his colleagues. Figure 1 shows some photos of the squeeze casting.