Although China is a big foundry country, it is far from being a strong foundry country. The foundry art, foundry quality, technology and other economic indicators of China are far behind those of advanced countries. Sand casting is the main casting process, in which manual and semi-mechanized modes still account for a large proportion. However, the die casting industry in China has developed rapidly in recent years, maintaining an annual growth rate of 7% to 10%. The automobile industry in China is developing. In order to reduce the weight of automobiles, the consumption of light metals such as aluminum and magnesium will further increase, which puts forward higher quality requirements for die casting. There is still a gap between China's foundry technology and equipment and advanced countries. Before 1990, there were few computers used in the design of casting molds, which were mainly made of common equipment. In the1990s, the huge market demand, especially the rapid development of automobile and motorcycle industries, greatly promoted the development of die casting industry in China. At the same time, with the participation of joint ventures and wholly-owned enterprises in the introduction of foreign advanced equipment and mold manufacturing technology, the domestic level of die-casting design and manufacturing technology has been gradually improved, and some enterprises have the ability to design and manufacture precision molds on a large scale. For example, the die-casting machine designed and manufactured by the die-casting factory of FAW Foundry Co., Ltd. is equipped with a set of 3,400 t die-casting molds with a total weight of 33.5t, which is the largest die-casting mold in China.

Since1990s, the main changes in the design and manufacture of die casting industry are as follows:

(1) has a high level of mold production technology and high technical content in mold design and manufacturing, which has quickly become a powerful quality assurance for mold manufacturing. The application of CAD/CAM/CAE shows the superiority of using information technology to promote the mold industry, and CAD/CAM/CAE has become a widely used technology in mold enterprises. CAD/CAM technology has been widely used in die casting industry. At present, AutoCAD is the main software used in two-dimensional design, and many softwares are used in three-dimensional design, mainly including Pro/E, UG and Cimatron.

At present, the three-dimensional design of FAW Die Casting Factory has reached 95%. In the three-dimensional design, the assembly interference detection technology in three-dimensional virtual assembly is used to check and ensure the quality of mold design and ensure the rationality of the design process. Three-dimensional data is edited by CAM software, and NC code is directly transmitted to the processing die on digital equipment. The widespread application of CNC machine tools ensures the machining accuracy and quality of die parts, and greatly improves the precision and production efficiency of dies. CAE technology is gradually applied to actual design and production. CAE simulation technology is used to analyze the filling process and cooling process of metal, predict the possible defects in product development and simulate before solidification, which greatly optimizes the design process and shortens the test time. The die casting factory of FAW Foundry Co., Ltd. has applied CAE technology to simulate and analyze the flow field and temperature field in the mold design of some large and complex molds, such as engine cylinder block, cylinder head and transmission housing, and the process yield has been greatly improved.

(2) Milling die cavity is an important processing method. High Speed Machining (HSM) is a machining technology characterized by high speed, AG feed and high machining quality. It has many advantages, such as low workpiece temperature rise, small cutting force, stable machining, high machining quality and efficiency (5 to 10 times that of ordinary milling) and machining hard materials (up to 60HRC), so it is becoming more and more important in mold machining. High-speed machining technology has entered the mold industry, which has improved the accuracy of the mold and greatly shortened the mold manufacturing time. The research shows that the processing time of HSM can be reduced by 30% for general complicated dies.

At present, in order to shorten the mold cycle and improve the market competitiveness, mold enterprises adopt more and more high-speed machining technologies. HSM is generally used for machining large and medium-sized dies, such as automobile panel dies, die-casting dies, plastic dies and other large-scale surface machining, and its surface machining accuracy can reach 0.01mm. Using high-speed CNC milling technology in production can greatly reduce tooling time. After high-speed milling, only a little polishing is needed, which saves a lot of grinding and polishing time.

Increasing the equipment investment of high-speed CNC milling machines and mold enterprises is one of the key points.