Shearline pushes new frontier with ecometal

Shearline has moved closer to becoming the first commercial organisation in the UK to offer the revolutionary Magnesium Thixomoulding® process, which is a more environmentally friendly way to process Magnesium. Thixomoulded Magnesium has many benefits, for example it can be 75% lighter than steel so can reduce energy usage when used for components in transport systems. The manufacturing process itself uses less energy than traditional casting and can produce less than half the waste.

Charles Maltby, Technical and Commercial Director at the precision engineering company Shearline, explains that the company has put together a consortium of leaders in the industry to bid for European funding (FP7) that could see the company developing the largest facility for Magnesium Thixomoulding in the UK.

“Magnesium is an exciting metal, and Thixomoulding allows alloys to be moulded into structures that are strong and light, and require reduced processing. An ideal application is seat structures for airplanes; reducing the weight of seating by 35% will make a huge difference to the energy consumption of the aircraft.

“Our bid team includes: Magnesium Elektron, a UK company that has developed the alloys; JSW/Buhler, makers of injection moulding equipment; Sirris, a Belgian research organization with their own existing generation Thixomoulding machine; and AM2 a German company led by Bernd Wendinger, an authority in this field. These commercial partners together with the University of Sheffield and the Advanced Forming Research Centre, linked to the University of Strathclyde offer a strong team with worldclass expertise.”

The consortium will look to expand knowledge of the commercial applications of the technology. Thixomoulding uses a semi-solid state for the alloy to allow it to smoothly fill even complex shape moulds. The resulting structures can have thinner walls than conventional die-casting and a higher resistance to fatigue and corrosion. These qualities mean a wide range of industries could benefit from using Magnesium, with applications ranging from medical devices to defence equipment.

Shearline already has a Knowledge Transfer Partnership Associate from the University of Shefield, Rachel Peachey, working in the company to evaluate the properties of the new alloys, which offer significant improvements over existing ones.

She explains that repeatability is one of the advantages of Thixomoulding: “With traditional casting there can be a lot of scrapage because the parts are not of consistent quality. One company we have spoken to are forced to reject about two in every five gearbox housings because the process they are using cannot ensure that each box is of a sufficient standard. Thixomoulding can overcome this problem because each part a mould produces is identical, so the company is excited by its potential.”

Thixomoulding can produce accurate and complex shapes, which means that multi-part assemblies can often be modified to use just one or two parts, reducing the energy used during both the manufacturing and assembly processes.

The company is keen to explore the potential of using the process for relatively large structures within the aerospace, automotive, defence and other high tech sectors, so part of the proposal is to install a ‘large-size’ Thixomoulding machine at Shearline’s Ely premises. This would enable industries all over Europe to access the many benefits of Magnesium Thixomoulding.

Charles concludes: “Thixomoulding has many environmental benefits – the manufacturing process reduces energy usage and waste, and the lightweight parts it can produce have the potential to make huge improvements to efficiency in the transport industry. We’re very excited to be developing the process and exploring its vast range of applications.”

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