Tool Steel Castings

Micron manufacture tool steels for many applications.

Micron manufacture tool steels for many applications including Gravity Die moulds and inserts, Press Tools, trims and punches and furnace pouring and launder spouts for Aluminium melting and holding furnaces. We are able to provide castings near to net shape thus avoiding extensive machining costs associated with wrought billets and blanks. Casting integrity is foremost in our inspection procedures with full Non-destructive testing carried out on site.

Tool Steel Castings

Rapid deliveries
Lower machining costs
Choice of materials

Die Steels

Micron are specialists in the manufacture of hot work tool steels for use in gravity die casting of Aluminium and other non-ferrous alloys. Castings offer greater flexiblity over wrought alloys and billet material. Near net shapes can be achieved negating the need for extensive and costly machining time. Die blocks and inserts made in cast H13, for example, possess the same properties as their wrought equivalent often at a fraction of the cost. Casting integrity is assured by the use of non-destructive testing.

We have a range of material grades to suit a variety of applications and die-cast alloys.

Pressure Die

MICRALLOY Tool Steel Pots and Goosenecks for Hot Chamber Die Casting Machines

Micron Alloys have for many years been producing cast components in Tool Steel such as melt pots, crucibles and goosenecks for the pressure die-casting industry.

Tool Steel offers hugely significant benefits over Cast Iron :-

Molten Zinc has an aggressive erosive and corrosive effect on even the tightest grained Cast Iron, these alloys attack the graphite flakes through oxidation opening up the surface allowing further penetration by the molten material. Once this initial penetration has taken place there is a rapid degradation of the Cast Iron resulting in significant and often intolerable ferrite pick-up in the melt bath together with other impurities.

Cast Iron has reasonable thermal conductivity but even thermal fatigue can cause pot failure on high volume zinc machines (relatively low temperature) in as little as 6 months.

MICRALLOY, a Cr Mo V Steel, is a high performance, hot-work tool steel, possessing good strength, impact resistance, hardness and oxidation resistance and excellent elevated temperature properties. This material simply does not suffer erosion from molten Zinc alloys.

Our castings are long-cycle annealed which together with their alloy content promotes a very even grain structure with a matrix of Sorbite or Troostitic Pearlite with a maximum Hardness of 255 BHN. Readily machinable the material is highly resistant to thermal fatigue, the corrosive and any washing and erosive effects of the molten alloy. This structure also results in the molten alloy not being contaminated by Ferrite or Oxide inclusions leading to cleaner melted material, with enhanced mechanical properties.

It is unlikely that MICRALLOY pots will ever require replacing. Currently we have pots in hot chamber Zinc machines which have lasted for 20+ years and are still in service!