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Research

CAST: Creating Innovative Light Metals Technology
Growth in the production of both magnesium and aluminium is being driven by the need from transport industries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and thus weight. Research and development on light metal alloys has identified potential applications for aluminium, magnesium and titanium, which not only reduce the weight of metal components, but can also improve a range of desirable metal properties such as strength, formability and crash worthiness. CAST’s research helps industry to achieve the benefits arising from the use of light metals. CAST does this through innovations in the processing and manufacture of light metals and their alloys, along with the development of potential applications for these materials. Our research is divided into four sectors that focus on the upstream processing and downstream application of the light metals aluminium and magnesium. These
four sectors are Aluminium Casthouse Products, Aluminium Die Casting, Magnesium Production and Magnesium Applications.

CAST’s research program relies on a strong partnership between CAST’s researchers and industry. In collaboration with industry, our aim is to apply world class scientific research to solve relevant problems in light metals manufacturing. To complement our skills and capabilities we also invest time in forging national andinternational strategic partnerships. To create leading edge light metals technology we foster an environment that enables ideas to
be taken to commercialisation. To facilitate this we have recently introduced a range of “Proof-of-concept” projects, where speculative ideas can be assessed for their potential ascommercially viable technologies. The logic behind this new set of CAST research projects is to allow researchers more latitude to explore their creative ideas before CAST commits to a more extensive phase of development.

As CAST ends its third year, many of our research projects have been undergoing review with a significant amount of time spent on discussing the commercialisation of the outcomes from projects. The commercialisation of CAST’s new die coating technology, CASTcoat™, and our melt protection technology for magnesium alloys, a cover gas alternative to SF6, are both well advanced and other opportunities for commercialisation of our research outcomes have been identified.

CAST’s great strength is the breadth of expertise that can be called on to contribute to research problems in the light metals area. A recent external review of our research program recognised that the quality of the research personnel across the sweep of the research partner organisations was, “very impressive”, with the research being of “high quality”. Such a high standard in human resources combined with the range of facilities available in CAST’s partner organisations ensures that CAST is well equipped to tackle the major issues limiting the adoption of light metals technologies by manufacturing industries and their customers. The following pages describe the achievements in particular projects undertaken within our four research sector programs.