Die casting specialist Bühler uses Open House Day at its Austrian plant to showcase a new megacasting machine for the first time in Europe.
The Carat 840 behemoth claims both huge casting capabilities with improved emissions and material sustainability. Recently Bühler’s factory at St. Valentin, near Linz, provided automaker customers the chance to tour the new machine that can produce structural castings for automotive body-in-white assemblies while reducing complexity in production, minimizing production costs and lowering CO2-equivalent emissions.
The company has been active in die casting for nearly 100 years and megacasting is a further development of the structural process of producing complex, thin-walled parts using die casting, which Bühler has driven since the early 2000s.
The Carat 840 is named after its 8,400-ton locking force. With a height of 25 ft. (7.6 m) and a floor area of about 525 sq.-ft. (160 sq.-m), the machine can inject more than 440 lbs. (200 kg) of liquid aluminum into a die within milliseconds.
Its megacasting technology allows a single die-cast part to replace between 70 and 100 parts. These single-piece castings generally will be produced close to the automotive assembly line, which allows for better integration and reduced transport.
Apart from the reduction in complexity, aluminum castings have the potential to reduce CO2-equivalent emissions by a claimed 70%. This can be achieved by using aluminum alloys with low CO2e footprint, avoiding fossil fuels for melting and powering all operations with renewable electricity.
