Electric Infrared Die Heating for Aluminum High Pressure Die Casting

Casting is a substantial part of modern manufacturing and production, typically used in the production of aluminum alloys. The high pressure die casting process is extremely suitable for mass production. Due to the high volume, wasted time and resources during the production cycle become more significant. Aluminum die castings require the die to be at elevated temperatures to produce acceptable castings. When the inner surfaces of a die are cold, the outer shell of the casting will cool too rapidly, and solidification of the outer shell occurs before the aluminum has time to uniformly fill the cavities. Therefore, without the die being within the proper temperature range, the castings produced will have significant issues in porosity and casting incompleteness. Furthermore, stresses are introduced to the casting surfaces when warm-up shots are used to raise the temperature prior to production. In the present work, research is conducted on designing a heating method for a casting die used in the manufacturing of an automotive transmission intermediate plate. An electric, short wave infrared heating system is simple and effective for the purpose. By utilizing an electric infrared heater in combination with a flat mirror reflector, the aluminum high pressure die casting die was heated to 300°C surface temperature within 30 minutes. Further research can be done to optimize heat flux distribution and minimize energy consumption