The definition of traditional manufacturing industry refers to the industrial production process in which raw materials are converted into finished products and sold in the market, which not only provides a material basis for human development, but also an important part of economic development. However, with the increasing scale of industrial economy and the cost of production factors, the resulting excessive consumption of resources and environmental pollution problems force the traditional manufacturing industry to change. The International Energy Agency (IEA) says nearly 1/3 of global energy demand and carbon dioxide emissions can be attributed to manufacturing. At the same time, according to the 2018 China Statistical Yearbook, the total energy consumption of the manufacturing industry is 2.4251487 billion tons of standard coal, accounting for about 83.55% of the total industrial energy consumption. In China, the adjustment of energy structure and industrial structure has promoted the growth of emissions in some areas, but it is also these two major driving forces that promote energy conservation and emission reduction at the national level. The implementation of energy conservation and emission reduction policy at the industrial level is the key to the development of low-carbon economy, and the decline of potential energy intensity has promoted the decoupling development of China’s manufacturing industry. Although energy efficiency is improving continuously, there is still a lot of room for improvement. Machinery manufacturing industry is the main industry in the manufacturing industry, which has the characteristics of discrete and process, and its diversity and complexity make it difficult to carry out and achieve energy saving and emission reduction.
As the basic industry in the industrial system, the traditional foundry industry is distributed in all regions of our country and occupies an important production position. Due to the openness of castings in volume and batch and the diversity of mold materials, the traditional sand casting process is still the most applicable and widely used metal forming method at present. its products are widely used in the production of automotive, aerospace, machine tools and other equipment parts. As shown in figure 1, the output of all kinds of castings in China basically showed an upward trend from 2010 to 2019, reaching 48.75 million tons in 2019, but the growth rate decreased year by year. According to statistics, the average energy efficiency of casting production in China is less than 30%, and the investment of foundry enterprises in energy conservation and emission reduction accounts for only 5% of the total investment in equipment, which is equivalent to 1% of the total investment in industrial developed countries. The reason is that the scale of the enterprise is small, the process equipment is backward, and the traditional casting method is difficult to match the current industrial technology level, which is also the main reason for high pollution and high energy consumption. For example, in terms of technology. The design of wood mold is complex and time-consuming, and the technological process is complicated; in casting forming, poor surface precision control, thick mold easy to lead to casting defects, difficulties in the production of thin-walled castings and so on. Not only that, the huge resource consumption and low production efficiency make it difficult for foundry enterprises to control production costs and achieve efficient production capacity.
In recent years, some new technical means have been applied in the machinery manufacturing industry. For example, sand mold 3D printing and sand mold NC milling technology appear in the casting market with high precision and high completion. According to its technological characteristics, it usually has certain advantages in making moulds, moulds, sand cores and even castings themselves. These technologies accelerate the formless production of the traditional sand casting process, fully reflect the new concept and production technology of the current rapid manufacturing technology, and provide a strong guarantee for promoting the sustainable development of the foundry industry. Therefore, in view of the current disadvantages of traditional casting industry in production technology and environmental protection, it is necessary to study the low-carbon design of non-die casting under the trend of new technology.