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Magnesium Renaissance

Researchers Make Magnesium More Attractive

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Three Building Blocks for Climate-Friendly Magnesium Processing

The first component of the new manufacturing process was the development of ways to replace fossil fuels with up to 100 percent climate-neutral hydrogen. The conversion of the melting and heating processes to hydrogen and their energy-efficient restructuring is a key step towards producing magnesium in a climate-neutral and cheaper way in the future. Once again, the researchers are using digital twins to better understand the processes and, above all, to improve operations. A second lever is the significantly shortened process route. The team is relying on the casting-rolling process integrated at the Institute of Metal Forming to quickly convert the molten magnesium into a primary product. The heat from the casting process is used directly for forming, resulting in sheets or wires that already have almost the desired component shape and dimensions. Energy and time-consuming downstream process steps can thus be reduced. The third component used is the calcium-containing magnesium alloy ZAX210. It can be processed well even at relatively low forming temperatures of around 200 °C (~392 °F). The alloy makes it possible to carry out forming processes at significantly lower temperatures without compromising on the component properties.

Specialties in the New Processing of Magnesium Alloys

The research team also developed the "GieWaCon" process specifically for wire production with magnesium, which combines wire casting rolling with the Conform process, which is already established for copper and has now been transferred to magnesium for the first time, as they emphasize. Because the process works at room temperature, the heat present in the casting process can be used to directly manufacture a wire product in just a few process steps. The magnesium wires produced in this way ultimately have a diameter of 1.6 millimetres - achieved either directly using the conform process or by subsequent wire drawing. The project also shows that the principle of the shortened process route can also be transferred to other forming processes. For example, the magnesium alloy used was successfully forged; the resulting components were reworked immediately after forming, for example by deburring or milling. In addition, an industrial partner developed an extrusion process in which billets are first cast and then extruded from the casting heat. The resulting tube is cut and bent open so that it can be processed into sheet metal - also without additional heating steps.

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