Professor Y. Furuya (Hirosaki University), Distinguished IMR Fellow/Project Leader A. Inoue (President of Tohoku University) and Associate Professor H. M. Kimura (IMR of Tohoku University) succeeded in development of an innovative “Rapid-Rotation Centrifugal Casting Process” which enables the reduction in costs of the components and commercial production of the amorphous bulk metallic glassy alloys (BMGs). Metallic glass pipes, small gears, screws and biomedical artificial dental root model were able to be produced successfully from Zr or Fe metallic glassy alloy systems within only a few seconds at one process by using this method, that is, the molten raw BMG alloys were poured into copper mold with rotation speed of 3,000 rpm which causes 80 times as much centrifugal pressurization force as gravity. Because of synergistic effect of rapid solidification and high pressurization casting in the innovative manufacturing process of metallic glass components, this process has many technical advantages such as expansion of element ingredient composition, uniformity of the quality, reduction of internal defects and prevention of degradation at the secondary fabrication process of BMGs, etc. It will be easy to apply this process to automation. As a result, mass production and great reduction in costs of metallic glass components will be possible in the very near future. The “Rapid-Rotation Centrifugal Casting” technology will attract great attention as a breakthrough for bulk metallic glass technology since the costs has been the biggest problem for metallic glasses to commercial utilization in comparison with the conventional materials. These results were presented at the Spring Meeting of Japan Institute of Metals 2007 on March 28, Chiba Institute of Technology, and were introduced with Kahoku Shimpo (March 24 morning newspaper), and Nikkan Kogyo Shimbun (March 27).
Artificial Dental Root Produced by Rapid-Rotation Centrifugal Casting Process.