The spread of COVID-19 has a great impact on human life and production, as an important part of the manufacturing industry, the die casting industry can’t be spared. What challenges and difficulties will the epidemic situation have on the casting foundry and die casting automobile parts supply? What measures should a die casting company take to turn the crisis into an opportunity?
More and more car body structure parts are using aluminum alloy die castings, such as the dash beam, car rim, seat frame, and more. The application of die casting automobile parts is related to the process and development technology of aluminum car parts. The production of lightweight automobile parts is always a challenge for die casting manufacturers. What difficulties are there for die casting automotive parts supply?
1. Difficulty of returning to work and production. Due to the influence of COVID-19 and other factors, the production and sales of automobiles and automotive parts have dropped sharply. Since March, most of China’s automobile factories began to return to work and production. However, in the first half of the year, the impact on automobile enterprises is still relatively large. One is that the rate of returning to work is not high, and the other is that the sales are not good. Therefore, relevant policies have been issued in many places to stimulate automobile consumption. If the auto parts manufacturers can focus on the development of commercial cars die casting parts in order to promote automobile lightweight, this will bring opportunities to the die casting industry.
2. Inventory management. Companies with a higher degree of automation will return to work more quickly, while those with a low degree of automation will return to work more slowly. In addition, the level of inventory management will affect the ability of enterprises to resist shocks in the face of abnormal circumstances.
3. Logistics. For casting companies, they not only supply blank products, many enterprises have gone deep into machining, assembly, and other processes. The logistics industry is directly affected by the epidemic, and many foundries are unable to deliver parts to the user’s factory. Therefore, how to better control the logistics supply chain is a new challenge for enterprises.
1. Die casting enterprises should have long-term planning. Before the crisis, most enterprises did not plan and had no time to train their employees when the orders were sufficient. As a result, the crisis came and the enterprise’s ability to resist shocks was weak, leading to large-scale layoffs. If an enterprise has no long-term planning, it will encounter many problems and is difficult to solve. Such enterprises are more likely to be shuffled out of the market. If the enterprise has solid internal training and long-term planning, then it has strong shock resistance and strong staff cohesion. Therefore, enterprises should have clear medium and long-term planning, pay attention to staff training and the application of new technology, and make some investment in soft power, so as to ensure a strong anti-risk ability in the face of crisis.
2. Emphasis on simulation. Foreign foundries and aluminum die-casting factories usually take the lead in digital simulation. Usually, before a die casting scheme is finalized, they will do 10-16 simulation analysis, add as many conditions as possible, and some available means, such as vacuum, extrusion, and point cooling, can do some work in the simulation analysis to confirm the boundary value of the design process parameters. This will not bring too much cost investment to the aluminum die-casting plant, because it is a computer simulation, but it can increase the persuasiveness of die-casting products.
3. Development of alloy materials. For example, the application of aluminum die casting in emerging fields, such as some aluminum castings for a battery case, involves the development of aluminum alloy materials. What kind of reaction will the cost of aluminum alloy materials have on aluminum die casting. There are also some die-casting structural parts that need to be heat-treated. What kind of reaction is there for the heat-treated die-casting parts, such as deformation and bubbles. For these basic research, some leading die-casting plants have such technical strength, and can do some research on chemical composition analysis of materials. Die casting factories (parts manufacturers) can increase investment in basic research and cooperate with some universities and scientific research institutes in China to master some basic data of new materials, such as elongation, high-speed stretching, fatigue resistance, etc.
4. Better understanding of the mechanical properties of materials. For some thick wall parts, when using the aluminum alloy containing silicon and magnesium for die casting, the mechanical properties can not meet the standard. It is easy to find the right direction if we have a lot of data about chemical composition and mechanical properties. In order to produce the die casting parts that meet the requirements, how to adjust the chemical composition and how much to adjust, and how to adjust the corresponding die-casting process. Only in this way can we reduce the loss of physical input and reduce the development time of the project.
5. Design. Several factors should be considered in the preliminary design. One is whether the design and process of the die casting parts are reasonable, because the die-casting factory has already had some experience for many years, so participating in it can make the whole vehicle factory fewer detours in casting; second, the vehicle factory hopes that the die-casting plant (parts factory) can do static mechanical analysis or dynamic mechanical analysis.
