There are several secondary steps which may need to be taken once the casting is removed, such as removing excess metal and smoothing rough surfaces. However, die casting can create pieces of metal as thin as 1mm wide in these four simple steps, which makes it a more economic process than using stamping presses or machine tools that require the operation of multiple pieces of large machinery for metalwork.
The Life of a Die
A die casting die is built to do several things, each of equal importance, and quite often the die itself cannot produce a completed final product. While a die holds the liquid metal inside itself to create a cast, there also must be a place for the metal to enter the die and reach the inside. This means that when the metal cools, there will be small pieces of unwanted metal attached to the final cast called flash, which will need to be removed by hand or secondary machine.
Hydraulic presses can be used to remove the flash or scrap, while an older technique is to just saw off the flash by hand. A casting may need to be sanded or ground down to remove mold lines, and if any extra holes for screws or undercutting is necessary, this must be...