Endurance Technologies Ltd, Pune, is one of India’s leading aluminum diecasting companies, providing complete solutions for cast wheel, suspension, transmission and brake products. Endur-ance Technologies has received the “Best Casting Award” at Alucast 2010 for its flywheel housing casting.
The flywheel housing, an essential part of an engine, is mounted on the fly wheel to act as a cover and to accommodate various other components such as the starter motor. The main requirement for the part is a robust construction, as the flywheel has to withstand vibrations produced by the engine. With the aid of Magmasoft, Endurance Technologies has developed this component to ful-fill the customer’s requirements. In cooperation with the OEM design team, Endurance modified the product design and also changed the production process from gravity diecasting to high pres-sure diecasting. The casting weight was reduced from 9.5 kg to 7 kg, and the runner and gating sys-tem was optimized with the help of Magmasoft simulations.
At the beginning of the project, a prototype sample casting was provided by the customer that weighed 9.5 kg with a minimum wall thickness of 10 mm. The Endurance engineers’ first objective was to reduce the casting weight and optimize the process productivity. To fulfill this requirement, the casting design had to be modified after studying the solidification pattern using Magmasoft simulations. Although the original prototype sample was produced in a gravity diecasting process, Endurance proposed to change the manufacturing process to high pressure diecasting. After gen-eral approval, the casting model was jointly modified to meet the manufacturing requirements of the HPDC process. Using Magmasoft simulations, the casting weight could be reduced by 2.5 kg by minimizing wall thickness and mass accumulations at pockets and ribs in appropriate areas.