Magnesium Compared to Zinc – Die Casting Characteristics. Die casting has been getting lots of attention lately for its overall usefulness to the manufacturing process. How much it lessens production costs and production time has been proven to be very significant.

However, the metal being used for the die casting process has always been under debate. Both magnesium and zinc have their own properties which make manufacturers choose one over the other. Magnesium compared to zinc – what does one have as an advantage over the other?

Zinc is agreed upon by manufacturers as the easiest alloy to cast because it has very high ductility. Molten zinc can easily be stretched and shaped into the molds used for die casting. Zinc also has high impact strength, for die casts which need a lot of pounding and shaping to form.

Magnesium, on the other hand, is the easiest alloy to machine. After the die casting process, once the mold has done its job, machining is required for the finer details, and this is where magnesium shines because of its softness to machine over zinc. It is also much lighter than zinc, which is very important in the current trends of industry where lighter is better.

On paper, magnesium compared to zinc looks like a better metal to use in die casting. However, it is still of course up to the manufacturer which alloy to use for the process.