Automobile Casting
Casting is one of the oldest metal forming methods. About 15% to 20% of automobile parts are castings produced by different casting methods. These castings are mainly key components of the power system and important structural components. At present, the production technology of automobile castings in developed countries in the European and American automobile industries is advanced, the product quality is good, the production efficiency is high, and the environmental pollution is small. Casting raw and auxiliary materials have been serialized and standardized, and the entire production process has been mechanized, automated and intelligent. These countries generally use digital technology to improve the level of casting process design, the casting scrap rate is about 2% to 5%, and have established multinational service systems and network technical support. In contrast, although the output of automobile castings in my country is relatively large, most of them are black castings with low added value and technical content and relatively simple structure, which is far from the foreign level. This paper mainly discusses the development direction of automobile castings and automobile technology from the development needs of automobile energy saving and environmental protection.
1 The development direction of automobile castings
1.1 Integrated design of automotive castings
With the increasing requirements for energy conservation, environmental protection and production cost reduction in automobiles, the advantages of casting and forming are fully utilized, and the original stamping, welding, forging and casting of several parts, through reasonable design and structural optimization, realize the casting of integrated parts Forming can effectively reduce the weight of the parts and reduce unnecessary processing processes, so as to realize the lightweight and high performance of the parts.
Figure 1 shows the integrated axle housing developed by FAW Group, which is used to replace the welded axle housing and the new product cast axle housing with half-shaft casing, realize the integrated casting of castings, and make full use of the advantages of casting. At present, the main form of the common cast integral axle housing is to press-in the two ends of the axle housing with seamless steel pipes as half shaft casings, and fix them with pins to form the axle housing assembly. In order to further improve the strength and rigidity of the axle housing and simplify the process, FAW Group has developed an integrated axle housing that directly casts the axle casing (the parts on both sides of the axle housing in Figure 1) on the axle housing. It is difficult to process, the cost is greatly reduced, the structure of the axle housing tends to be simple, and the rigidity of the axle housing is good, which can be made into complex and ideal shapes, the wall thickness can be changed, and the ideal stress distribution can be obtained, and its strength and rigidity are high. , works reliably. Due to the integration of the half-shaft sleeves, the size of the casting has increased significantly, the length of the casting is 2 258 mm and its single piece weight exceeds 200 kg. In view of the characteristics of this integrated casting, the company has established a special production line to ensure production.
