China News Service, Gansu News, December 11 (Yin Yi Yang Hongsen) After continuous technical research, Jiaxing Aluminum Jiaxin New Materials Company of Jiugang Group has recently achieved important progress in the field of high-end aluminum alloy casting: it has successfully applied oil-air slip casting technology to mass-produce high-end aluminum alloy products with excellent quality and stable performance. While improving material utilization and production efficiency, it has laid a technological foundation for the company to enter high-end markets such as aerospace and high-precision alloy materials. At present, this process technology has been stably applied in multiple aluminum alloy grades such as 6082, 6063, and 6061, and is gradually expanding to products of larger specifications.
In the production process of high-end aluminum alloy ingots, the casting process directly affects the structural uniformity and surface quality of the product. Although traditional hot top casting technology can basically meet the production needs of ordinary industrial materials, when producing high-end products such as aerospace and high-precision components, it often faces defects such as surface segregation, cold isolation, and cracks, which restricts product upgrades and market expansion. In this regard, Jiaxin New Materials Co., Ltd. will focus on oil-air slip casting technology.
“Oil-air slip casting technology is like putting a 'lubricating coat' on the ingot, so that the molten metal does not come into direct contact with the crystallizer, thereby achieving a smooth surface and uniform structure.” said Wang Xiaohu, associate process engineer of the casting operation area of Dongxing Aluminum Longxi Branch. However, this technology has extremely high requirements for the control of key parameters such as temperature fluctuations, liquid level stability, and gas proportions, and there is a lack of mature experience in applying this technology to produce large-sized similar products in China. It was once regarded as a technical “hard nut” in the industry.
Faced with technical bottlenecks, the production technology team of Jiaxin New Materials Co., Ltd. rose to the challenge and formulated precise control plans around key processes such as ingredient ratio, refining temperature, and casting speed, and clarified the process parameters of each link to the operating positions. During the trial production period, management personnel and technical backbones were stationed at the site throughout the entire process, overcoming many difficulties such as the difficulty in establishing an oil-gas slip state during the startup stage and large process fluctuations during operation.
“At the most stressful time, team members stayed until early morning for many days in a row just to observe the changing trend of a parameter.” Wang Xiaohu said that by optimizing the cooling water volume, air pressure parameters and oil supply frequency in real time, they gradually broke through the technical bottleneck and established a stable oil-air slip casting process system.
Compared with ordinary hot top casting technology, oil-air slip casting technology shows significant advantages: segregation tumors on the surface of the ingot are basically eliminated, cold isolation problems are reduced by about 80%, reverse segregation layers are reduced by more than 60%, and the surface of the ingot is smoother. At the same time, the casting speed is increased by about 25%, the production capacity per unit time is significantly increased, and the material utilization rate in subsequent processing is also improved.
At present, Jiaxin New Materials Company has successfully used oil-air slip casting technology to produce aluminum alloy ingots with diameters of 178 mm, 228 mm, and 305 mm, and has initiated technical research on ultra-large products with a diameter of 533 mm. With the stable application of this technology in various types of aluminum alloy grades, the market competitiveness and brand influence of Jiugang's high-end aluminum alloy products are gradually improving. (over)