No Step

None of us ever think about threaded holes until the customer complaints roll in. You have heard them. The threaded holes are stripping. As a defense your operators end up 100% thread guaging. I have been there too. The thread guages wear out and you are back at the beginning.

The good new is that a more effective solution is possible in aluminum die casting. The .030 (.75mm) thick skin of aluminum die castings is 30% stronger than the interior. This can help you if you don’t use step drills and machine it away. Yes we are talking about near net castings. In general the die must be made by a die shop that knows how to adjust chamfer and counter bore true position guided by casting samples without welding or adding flash lines. Surprise surprise – shrink and warp are more accurately compensated for when real castings dimensions are used. Thread forming taps always make a stronger thread. Some die casting die shops even know the correct core shapes to create holes that can be form tapped without predrilling. Amazingly this type of thread is strong enough to break the bolt first. When the bolts break first the customer has to admit that he is over torquing.

di

Swirl

GM Inline 6 cylinder oil pan fill
I6 oil pan fill path

Success- The runner system run through the flow model software finally showed that the vents were the last place to fill. —– Not so fast —- Many real castings will deviate from the predicted fill when the die is actually run. Swirl is a common item to correct as the parts we try to make are thinner and flatter. Swirl is a fill pattern where the incoming metal travels across the part and back effectively doubling the fill travel length.
Oil pans are known to be susceptable to swirl. Swirl in filling an oil pan casting usually results in partially bonded knit lines that are known to leak.

I still recommend tuning the runner design until a flow model shows a swirtl free fill pattern. In many cases this saves massive gating changes that only can be implemented with major amounts die life spoiling welding. In the example shown the swirl we saw on the first casting was eliminated by simply adjusting the shape of the gate fans. The fill pattern after adjusting now matches the pattern we saw in our flow models. I am hopeful that the accuracy of the models can be improved such that gate shape adjusting is no longer required after real castings are made.