The future competitiveness of the U.S. metalcasting industry requires the combined resources and talents of industry, academia, and government. Metalcasting industry leaders have been leveraging limited resources with cooperative partnerships as a way of maximizing investments in advanced technologies to solve pre-competitive technical problems and create new applications for castings.

In September 1995, the metalcasting industry published its vision for meeting future challenges. This vision entails enlarging the application of metalcasting technology and expanding its usefulness to society through improvements in energy efficiency, cost minimization, and other innovations. Beyond 2000: A Vision for the American Metalcastiug Industry, provides the framework for the metalcasting industry to become more competitive, productive, and efficient by the year 2020. Though this document identifies major needs of the metalcasting industry, it does not present a detailed technology strategy to achieve the vision. The industry has therefore prepared this Metalcastiug Industry Technology Roadmap to provide a blueprint of the technology milestones needed to achieve the goals outlined in the vision.

So in June 1997, the U.S. Department of Energy, the American Foundrymen's Society, the Steel Founders' Society of America, the North American Die Casting Association, and the Cast Metal Coalition sponsored the Metalcasting Industry Technology Roadrrtap Workshop. This event brought together experts from the metalcasting industry, some major customers, academia, and the national laboratories to identify key targets of opportunity, technology barriers, and priority research needs for the metalcasting industry.

The work sessions resulted in over 100 research ideas which were then assigned some level of priority by the industry. The appropriate time frame-near (0 - 3 years), mid (3 - 10 years), and long (beyond 10 years)-in which the research activity is expected to yield benefits has been noted for each activity.

This Roadatap document includes the results of the workshop and incorporates material from an earlier roadmap report that was prepared with help from the major metalcasting industry technical societies. The current Roadmap contains the following sections:

For each of the areas listed above, the Roadmap discusses the current situation of the industry, the critical trends and driving forces affecting it, the performance targets given in the Beyond 2000, the technical and other barriers preventing the industry from achieving these performance targets, and the research and development activities that the industry has recommended for overcoming the barriers. Instead of listing R&D activities, the last three sections discuss how the issues of human resources, profitability, and partnerships can be integrated with the rest of the Roadmap. Selected high priority research needs for the metalcasting industry are summarized as follows.

Products and Markets

• Transform foundries to tier one suppliers
• Develop computer design tools to move from design concept to a design for manufacturing
• Develop methods to encourage/systematize concurrent engineering partnerships within the metalcasting industry
• Develop ways to demonstrate the quality and value of castings
• Develop tools and technologies to reduce lead times in the metalcasting industry

Materials Technology

• Develop quantitative relationships between alloy chemistries, properties, and processing
• Establish standard methodologies for materials testing
• Develop a clean melting and remelting process
• Develop methods for fast, accurate, and nondestructive evaluation of ingot and as-cast chemistries and properties (particularly for ferrous castings)
• Develop improved techniques to measure the acceptability of liquid metal prior to casting
• Develop a national initiative to foster interest in materials science and engineering

Manufacturing Technology

• Develop low-cost rapid tooling technology
• Improve tooling design to reduce the time to get castings to market
• Develop cost-effective and dimensionally accurate patternmaking processes for use in sand casting
• Improve the ability to produce size/dimension
• Develop smart controls and sensors for automation supervision
• Develop a systems approach to scheduling and tracking
• Figure out how die casting molds/dies actually fill
• Understand folds for aluminum lost foam casting
• Develop melting and pouring technologies that do not introduce gases to the process
• Develop a mathematical model that describes process control and can control the machine

Environmental Technology

• Develop environmentally benign, dimensionally stable molding materials for sand casting
• Develop new uses for wastes streams and/or new ways to treat wastes to make them more usable
• Develop emissions database for foundries to use to educate regulators