Magnesium parts
Yamaha Fine Technologies produces magnesium parts using thixomolding manufacturing process and contributes in reducing weight and increase the strength of mobile phones, digital cameras, and other mobile products.Our greatest asset is our ability to integrate the process in-house starting from the tool design to its development and manufacture, and we have integrated the whole process for the in-house production of magnesium molding, which requires longer processing compared to other plastic part. Our customers greatly valuate us from the point of view of mass production/stable quality, and especially our automation of the production process symbolized by our finish robot development by our company. We also dispatch our engineers to provide product design support and suchlike by carrying flow analysis, various reliability tests and by design control tools, and we contribute by reducing the burden of our customers and by speeding up of the design process while providing high quality products, and as such we have gained the trust of most of our customers. We can respond to our customers' requirements for mass production since we are equipped with the world's best equipments and have large production capacity to meet in good time any sudden variation in productions and at the same time, we can act in cooperation with our partners' factory in China to provide low cost products without compromising quality. At the same time, Yamaha Fine Technologies gives a lot of importance to companies, which are aiming at innovative new technology development to improve production.There are many issues still to be resolved, in the sphere of magnesium molding, such as new compounds, thin walls, cell production system, and new surface treatment technology, low surface resistance chemical treatment, and so forth. Our company infuses freely the latest technology in cooperation with Yamaha Corp., which has more than one hundred years of proud history and we tackle development in advanced technology on daily basis.Special feature of magnesium business
Do you find it difficult to replace plastic parts with magnesium? It is often very difficult to replace plastic molds with magnesium. The particularity of magnesium has limits when it comes to magnesium molding and secondary process. This often concerns the molding of the product itself, performance and precision, and when these factors are considered from the design process, they lead to a smooth production. Yamaha Fine Technologies dispatches its specialists to our customers to provide advice concerning magnesium and cooperate with the customers to progress the process of product design for a speedy and smooth completion of the product to reduce costs. In addition, we use flow analysis to select the most appropriate tool design. We contribute from the design process to complete the product in very short period.
Our in-house production integrates the whole production process from molding, painting and printing to shipment. (Part of the process is carried at Yamaha Corp)In addition, we produce magnesium molding tools and trim tools in in-house tooling division. Furthermore we promote highly efficient automation based on the cooperation between the FA divisions of the company for secondary process.
Our supply capacity is about two million parts per month including exterior and interior parts, and we are proud to be the industry top class supplier.
We have established technical cooperation with Jurong Huaye New Technology Industry Co. Ltd, located at Jiangsu, China and they are using molding tools produced in-house YFT and it is possible to integrate production from the molding process to shipment including painting at the Chinese plant in the same way as in our plant in Japan.
Special features of magnesium substrate
Magnesium is known as the lightest metal among the utility metals. In addition, rolled material AZ31B, forging material AM60, founding material AZ91D are well known as magnesium alloys. Magnesium alloy's special features compared to plastic molding parts and other metals:
- It is the lightest among utility metals
- It has high intensity compared to aluminum and general plastics.
- It functions as an excellent EMI shield when compared to other plastics.
- It has a high thermal conductivity compared to plastics.
- It has great stability against temperature and time.
- It has a high impression resistance compared to other metals.
- It has a high potential for recycling, which reduce the load on the environment.
Moreover, we could mention other features. Magnesium is often used for interior and exterior parts and for housing video cameras, digital cameras, mobile phones in Japan. There are examples in which it is used small size machine like chain saws, mowing machine, and suchlike. In addition, abroad, it is used in automotive parts to contribute to decreasing the weight of the car.
Magnesium alloy
| Magnesium alloy | Aluminum alloy | Plastic | Plastic | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AZ91D | ADC12D | ABS | PC | |
| Density (g/cm3) | 1.82 | 2.7 | 1.03 | 1.23 |
| Melting point/Glass tension point (°C) | 596 | 595 | 90 | 160 |
| Coefficient of thermal conductivity (W/mk) | 72 | 100 | 0.2 | 0.2 |
| Tensility strength (MPa) | 280 | 315 | 35 | 104 |
| Yield point (MPa) | 160 | 160 | N/A | N/A |
| Elongation (%) | 3 | 3 | 40 | 3 |
| Coefficient of elasticity | 45 | 71 | 2.1 | 6.7 |
Magnesium related links
| Japanese Magnesium Association | http://www.kt.rim.or.jp/~ho01-mag/ |
| JSW | http://www.jsw.co.jp/product/machinery/mg/mg1/index.html |
| Thixomat | http://www.thixomat.us/ |
Yamaha Fine Technologies Magnesium Technology
We are able to produce at present products with wall thickness of 0.6mm (in some parts 0.5), which were about 0.8mm about five years ago. We are pushing wall thickness to the boundary limits to meet the higher needs for small size products with very thin walls.
We have automated many manual operations, such as deburring, painting, removing flow marks, and suchlike using articulated robots. We have removed in this way all discrepancies, which may be caused by human hands and we contribute to stable quality and reduced labor. We are building an original automatic finishing robot technology with the assistance of the in-house FA divisions based on Yamaha Corporation's polishing robot for wind instruments.
We develop the one-person-stall method of production system, which usually used in assembly process, to a secondary processing process for the magnesium molding products. We have reduced lead-time and have achieved limited production of diversified products by combining our automatic finishing robots, with our automatic inspection system, and our multiple uniaxial NC processing machine.
We produce and develop related technology at the Production Engineering Division of Yamaha Corp. We have commercialized products with chrome free version five years ago, and we are deploying low resistance conversion treatment.