Grant: Automotive Partnership Canada Project

Canadian Auto Parts Toyota, Inc. (CAPTIN), located in Delta BC, was incorporated in 1983 by Toyota Motor Corporation of Japan. This facility represents the first manufacturing investment by Toyota in Canada. The facility produces up to 1.7 million aluminum wheels annually for Toyota assembly plants located throughout North America and is responsible for die design, casting, heat-treatment, machining and painting. The aluminum wheel business is highly competitive and manufacturers are constantly under pressure to improve quality and reduce cost. The high labor costs associated with manufacturing cast aluminum automotive wheels in Canada and the US has driven most of the manufacturing to Mexico and Asia. The on-going economic viability of this facility rests on its ability to innovate and stay ahead of the competition. The core and most critical technology for the production of aluminum wheels is the casting process. Presently, 45% of the wheels manufactured at the Delta, BC facility are produced using the conventional air-cooled, low-pressure die casting (LPDC) process, the balance, or approximately 55% are produced using a water-cooled variant called the Toyota Differential Pressure (TOP) process. The lalter, although capabte of producing a superior product due to the faster cooling rates that can be achieved, suffers from poor production yield ratios and high maintenance costs. In a partnership between researchers at UBC and CAPTIN, the goal of the program is to develop an advanced watercooled low-pressure die for the production of automotive wheels. The program will focus on the development of watercooling elements that will be placed within the die at key locations in order to rapidly cool the wheel in a manner that will carefully control the path of the solidification front to eliminate void formation. Advanced computational tools will be developed based on commercial software packages and on in-house codes to design the cooling elements, their optimal placement within the die structure and the timing for when they are switched on and off. Heat transfer analysis, thermal stress analysis and inverse heat transfer tools will be developed and applied in the program. The objective is to design an advanced die system that will allow for short cycle times and will allow for production yield ratios and operating costs comparable with conventional air-cooled die technology.