Plaster Cast and Sand Cast Magnesium Prototypes - Advantages and Limitations

Prototypes are a vital link between a mechanical or conceptual drawing and the tooling needed to produce a sucessful diecasting. Past experience has shown that during the prototyping phase of a component development program, quality, timing, flexibility and cost are very important elements. For these reasons, sand cast and plaster cast magnesium parts are often used to produce prototypes for magnesium diecastings which reproduce as much as possible the specified form, function and performance requirements (1).

This paper outlines the magnesium sand casting and plaster casting process technologies, the differences between the prototypes produced by each method and examples of succesfully prototyped magnesium applications.