Aluminum casting & mold design services

Introduction

Japanese manufacturing industries face increasingly fierce global competition across all aspects of quality, cost, and delivery. Particularly for aluminum casting products, which are essential in diverse fields such as automotive parts, electronic devices, and industrial machinery, competitiveness is significantly determined at the mold design stage. To introduce high-quality products to the market faster and at lower costs, it is urgent to move away from traditional trial-and-error development processes.

The global aluminum casting market continues to show robust growth. According to a report by Grand View Research, the market size reached $72.3 billion in 2023 and is projected to expand at a compound annual growth rate, CAGR, of 6.8% from 2024 to 2030, Source: Grand View Research,. Against this backdrop of growth, procurement from overseas, including Vietnam, has become a crucial strategy for many Japanese companies from the perspective of cost competitiveness and securing production capacity. However, overseas procurement consistently presents challenges such as quality control, on-time delivery, and technical communication. To overcome these challenges and build a stable supply chain, ensuring quality at the initial stage of mold design is extremely important.

Daiwa Aluminum Vietnam has, over many years, combined advanced Japanese technical capabilities with the strengths of Vietnam as a production base to meet the diverse needs of our customers. In particular, optimizing mold design through CAD simulation, Computer Aided Design Simulation, as detailed in this article, is one of our core strengths for consistently supplying high-quality aluminum casting products. By detecting and resolving potential problems at the design stage, we contribute to our customers’ quality improvement, cost reduction, and lead time reduction.

Challenges in Aluminum Mold Design and Traditional Solutions

In traditional aluminum mold design processes, problems typically only become apparent after a mold is manufactured based on design drawings and actual casting prototypes are produced. This “build-and-verify” approach inherently contains many challenges.

Increased Costs and Time Due to Numerous Prototypes

For complex parts or products requiring high precision, it is not uncommon to repeat prototyping three or more times on average. A survey by the Japan Die Casting Association reported that the average number of prototypes due to design changes in new mold development is 2.5 times, Source: Japan Die Casting Association,. Each prototyping cycle incurs significant costs, including mold manufacturing, material, casting, and inspection expenses, with total costs sometimes reaching millions to tens of millions of yen. Furthermore, since each prototyping cycle takes several weeks to several months, multiple prototypes significantly extend the development period.

Causes and Effects of Casting Defects

Various defects can occur in aluminum castings. Representative examples include shrinkage porosity, internal voids due to solidification shrinkage, blowholes, gas entrapment causing bubbles, misruns, molten metal failing to fill all parts of the mold, soldering, molten metal sticking to the mold, and mold cracking, cracks due to thermal fatigue of the mold,. These defects lead to insufficient product strength, degraded surface quality, and poor machinability, severely compromising the reliability of the final product. JFE Techno-Research’s materials also provide detailed explanations of these defect types and countermeasures, Source: JFE Techno-Research,. Overlooks at the design stage are often the root cause of these defects, leading to rework in later stages and the generation of defective products.

Rework and Risks Due to Design Changes

If defects are discovered during the prototyping stage, mold design changes become necessary. These design changes involve partial modification or remanufacturing of the mold, incurring additional costs. Generally, cost increases due to design changes are said to reach 10% to 20% of the initial design cost. Moreover, each design change carries the risk of delaying delivery by several weeks to several months, and in industries with short development cycles, such as the automotive industry, delays in market introduction can result in significant opportunity losses.

These challenges are particularly pronounced in overseas procurement. Language and cultural differences, as well as physical distance, complicate communication during design changes and tend to prolong the time required for problem-solving, thus demanding even greater accuracy in initial design.

Mechanism of Design Optimization through CAD Simulation

CAD simulation, especially casting simulation, a type of CAE analysis: Computer Aided Engineering analysis, is a powerful tool that fundamentally resolves these challenges and dramatically transforms the mold design process. By replicating the casting process in a digital environment, it becomes possible to identify potential problems and derive optimal designs before actually manufacturing the mold.

Principles and Analysis Items of Casting Simulation

Casting simulation performs numerical analysis based on physical laws on 3D models of molds and products created with CAD data. The main analysis items are as follows:

• Fluid Flow Analysis: Visualizes how molten metal fills the mold. It can predict misruns, air entrapment, and cold shuts, solidification at the confluence of molten metal,.
• Solidification Analysis: Predicts how molten metal solidifies. It identifies the location and size of shrinkage porosity and the distribution of crystal structures, allowing for the consideration of appropriate cooling structures and riser, molten metal supply part, placement.
• Stress Analysis: Predicts residual stress and deformation occurring inside the product during the cooling process after casting. This allows for evaluating product strength and dimensional accuracy, and optimizing mold shape and cooling conditions.
• Heat Transfer Analysis: Analyzes heat transfer between the mold and molten metal, evaluating mold temperature distribution and cooling efficiency. This contributes to extending mold life and improving productivity.

Through these analyses, casting simulation is said to predict casting defects with over 90% accuracy, Source: Fujitsu,.

Early Defect Prediction and Countermeasure Planning

By utilizing simulation, potential defects such as shrinkage porosity, blowholes, and misruns can be identified at the early design stage, before mold manufacturing begins. This enables proactive countermeasure planning before problems occur, rather than rework after problems arise. For example, if shrinkage porosity is predicted, the optimal solution can be found by trial and error in the simulation, such as changing the size or position of the riser, adding cooling channels, or adjusting the gate, molten metal inlet, position.

Optimization of Gate/Runner, Cooling Structure, and Ejector Pin Placement

Simulation is indispensable for optimizing key elements of mold design.

• Gate and Runner System: Optimizes the shape, size, and placement of gates, inlets, and runners, channels, to supply molten metal efficiently and uniformly into the mold. This prevents misruns and improves product quality.
• Cooling Structure: Optimizes the placement and diameter of cooling channels and the flow rate of cooling fluid to control the cooling speed after casting and prevent defects due to solidification shrinkage. This contributes to suppressing shrinkage porosity and shortening cycle times.
• Ejector Pin Placement: Optimizes the number, position, and size of ejector pins for smooth removal of castings from the mold. This prevents product deformation or damage and extends mold life.

Data-Driven Design Verification and Improvement Cycle

Simulation establishes a cycle of verifying and improving designs based on objective data, rather than relying on experience or intuition. This eliminates design subjectivity and achieves stable quality and high reproducibility. A column by Dentsu Soken also emphasizes the efficiency of mold design using CAD/CAE, Source: Dentsu Soken,. Data also reports that the introduction of simulation can reduce the average number of prototypes by 50% and shorten development periods by 20% to 30%, Source: Fundamentals and Applications of Casting Simulation,.

CAD Simulation Application Cases and Introduction Effects at Daiwa Aluminum Vietnam

Daiwa Aluminum Vietnam deeply understands the challenges faced by Japanese manufacturing customers in overseas procurement and actively introduces cutting-edge technologies and equipment to solve them. In particular, the utilization of CAD simulation in aluminum mold design is a source of our competitiveness and provides concrete benefits to our customers.

Daiwa Aluminum Vietnam’s Simulation Environment and Expert Personnel

We have introduced industry-standard advanced casting simulation software and employ numerous skilled expert engineers. These engineers combine extensive experience cultivated at our Japanese headquarters with knowledge gained through practical application in Vietnam, providing optimal analysis and design proposals tailored to our customers’ product characteristics. We have a track record of over 100 simulation analyses annually, and this knowledge is accumulated daily.

Specific Improvement Examples, Quality Improvement, Cost Reduction, Lead Time Reduction,

• Quality Improvement: In the mold design for a certain automotive part, there were concerns about shrinkage porosity with the traditional design. Simulation analysis revealed delayed solidification in specific thick-walled sections. By optimizing the cooling channel placement and gate position, we successfully reduced the shrinkage porosity occurrence rate at the prototyping stage from the conventional 3% to less than 0.1%. This significantly improved product reliability, and customer defect claims have been kept at zero.
• Cost Reduction: For another industrial machinery part mold, the traditional design required an average of two prototypes. By utilizing simulation, the risk of misruns was completely eliminated in the initial design. This reduced the number of prototypes to one, cutting mold development costs by approximately 15%. Furthermore, mold life was extended to 1.2 times the conventional duration through material choice and cooling structure optimization based on thermal stress analysis via simulation, contributing to long-term production cost reduction.
• Lead Time Reduction: In new development projects, early problem detection and design optimization through simulation have successfully shortened the period from mold design to mass production start by approximately 25% on average. This enables our customers to accelerate product market introduction and establish a competitive advantage.

Benefits for Customer Companies, High Quality, Stable Supply, Competitive Pricing,

Daiwa Aluminum Vietnam’s utilization of CAD simulation brings the following specific benefits to our customers:

• High-Quality Products: Through thorough quality verification at the design stage, we minimize the risk of casting defects and provide stable, high-quality products. Customer satisfaction is maintained at over 95%.
• Stable Supply: Reduced prototyping cycles and extended mold life directly lead to stable production planning. This reduces the risk of unexpected troubles causing delivery delays and ensures a stable product supply.
• Competitive Pricing: Reduced development costs, improved production efficiency, and lower defect rates are reflected in the final product cost, enabling us to offer competitive prices to our customers. Vietnam’s manufacturing investment environment is highly advantageous in terms of cost competitiveness, and JETRO’s report also suggests its potential, Source: JETRO,.

Strengthening Quality Assurance System in Overseas Procurement

In overseas procurement, quality assurance is one of the biggest concerns. Daiwa Aluminum Vietnam dispels this concern through a design process centered on CAD simulation. By thoroughly implementing “front-loading” to incorporate quality at the design stage, we overcome communication barriers due to physical distance and guarantee the high-quality standards required by Japanese manufacturing industries. This allows our customers to proceed with overseas procurement with confidence.

Conclusion

The utilization of CAD simulation in aluminum mold design is no longer an option but an essential strategy for modern manufacturing, especially for Japanese companies facing global competition. Traditional trial-and-error processes have limitations in all aspects of quality, cost, and delivery, making it difficult to maintain competitiveness.

CAD simulation significantly reduces the number of prototypes and shortens development periods through early prediction and countermeasures for casting defects, and optimization of gate/runner systems and cooling structures. This enables the achievement of key manufacturing goals: improved product quality, reduced development costs, and accelerated market introduction.

Daiwa Aluminum Vietnam has established a system to fully support customers from mold design to mass production by maximizing this cutting-edge technology. Our CAD simulation technology, backed by skilled expert engineers and extensive experience, provides a strong foundation for consistently supplying high-quality aluminum casting products at competitive prices. We are committed to alleviating quality assurance concerns in overseas procurement and contributing to the success of our customers’ businesses.

To all executives and procurement managers in Japanese manufacturing industries: if you have challenges regarding the quality, cost, or delivery of aluminum casting products, please do not hesitate to contact Daiwa Aluminum Vietnam. We are confident that our technical capabilities and experience can contribute to strengthening your global competitiveness.