From the perspective of casting output, China has become the largest producer in the world, indicating that the scale of China’s casting industry is still expanding and the demand for castings from various departments of the national economy is increasing. The proportion of nodular iron castings can represent a country’s casting technology and production management level to a great extent. Although the output of nodular iron castings in China is increasing year by year, it accounted for only 23.7% of the total output in 2003, while it reached 30% – 40% in advanced industrial countries, which is about twice that of China; The output of light metal castings in China accounts for only 5% – 7% of the total output, while that in foreign countries is 10% – 18%. These two indicators are important indicators to measure the comprehensive level of casting in a country, because the proportion of light metal castings can reflect the developed level of the country’s automobile industry.
Gray iron castings in China account for 52.79% of the total output of castings, 10% – 20% higher than that in other industrial advanced countries, reflecting the slow development of nodular cast iron and light alloy castings in China. However, since the 1990s, with the acceleration of China’s industrialization and the adjustment of industrial structure, the structure of casting products has been sharply adjusted at the same time. Although the output of traditional gray iron castings still plays an important role in the whole casting industry, at the same time, nodular iron castings and aluminum, magnesium and zinc alloy castings also began to grow and show a good development momentum. The output of steel castings and copper castings decreased slowly. At present, the main problem is that the production capacity of ordinary castings is surplus, but the manufacturing of precision and high-performance castings is still difficult and needs to be further improved.
The share of gray iron castings in the United States has gradually decreased steadily, the share of nodular iron castings has increased steadily year by year, and the share of malleable iron castings is not much, which is still decreasing year by year. Although the structure of various iron castings in China is unreasonable, the development trend is the same as that in the United States, which shows that China’s iron casting industry is developing healthily.
In recent five years, with the rapid development of national economy and automobile industry, the production of non-ferrous alloy die castings has been promoted. In 2003, the total output of die castings in China reached 708060 tons, with an annual growth rate of 13.5%. In 2004 and 2005, it still maintained a good development momentum. At the same time, the progress of casting technology, such as the growth of magnesium alloy casting output and the development and application of semi-solid molding casting technology, also provide conditions for this requirement. Therefore, the output of nonferrous gold castings in China is increasing year by year, ranking first among all kinds of castings, which shows that the nonferrous alloy casting industry in China has a good prospect. However, it can also be seen that there is still a certain gap between China’s nonferrous alloy production and the United States.