Contact Kinetic Die Casting Company 818-982-9200 if you have a difficult product to produce. We will be able to make parts for you when others fail. Send us your die casting tooling and we will make your parts for you.

A customer of ours, in the early 1990’s, contacted Kinetic Die Casting Company, to send us their die casting tooling so we could produce an aluminum die cast enclosure housing for them. This company, Monitor Dynamics Incorporated (MDI), produced a security card reader system used in government buildings. MDI was well known for their high quality security systems. MDI demanded high quality products from their suppliers.

This aluminum die casting part had transformed many times from its inception. It started out as a steel box that was welded together. The design was simple, ¼ inch plates welded together in a box shape with a slot to slide electronic cards through and an area for a keypad. The next change was to make aluminum sand castings in a similar design. Later, the delivery and quantity requirements for the programs required MDI to purchase die casting tooling and die casting parts from a competitor of ours.

Unfortunately, our competitor did not realize the important differences between aluminum sand casting parts and aluminum die casting parts. The part design was poorly planned in the following ways:

• The draft on the interior walls was not properly created, the parts has several drag marks and stuck too easily in the tool.
• The tooling die not include a mold base, it consisted of inserts only. This kept the customer captive to the poor quality die casting company, our competitor.
• The wall thicknesses of 1/4” or more, “for higher strength”. Greater wall thicknesses in die casting parts for greater strength is a misconception.

Here is how I helped MDI get good quality parts. First, I had my toolmaker fix the internal draft angle problems so the aluminum housing parts would no longer stick in the die casting tool. Secondly, I mounted the inserts into one of our many available mold bases so we could make good quality die casting production parts.

Then finally, we fought the production process to make good parts in spite of the problems and complications from the ¼” or greater wall thicknesses. There were many complications, such as, several sink marks or surface porosity from the metal wicking from thinner areas of the casting to the thicker areas. The casting would deform easily in the cooling process. The internal porosity from the thicker sections would also cause the paint and powder coating to bubble.

MDI was very pleased with the results we provided them. Their purchasing manager sent me a letter of appreciation. MDI is now known as Ameritron, Incorporated. You can read a copy of the letter of appreciation from the purchasing manager here..

“In the 12 years, Kinetic Die Casting has been an excellent supplier providing good pricing, excellent product and on time delivery. If you have a need for die casting products I would highly recommend Kinetic Die Casting”

……. Read letter HERE

Tags: Aluminum Boxes, Aluminum Die Casting, aluminum parts, Die Casting Parts, Manufacturing, Porosity

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 15th, 2010 at 1:28 am and is filed under Enclosures, newsletter. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.