New Developments with the SEED Technology

The SEED technology is a commercially available rheocasting process used in the production of high quality semi-solid slurries. The process, which is currently used in the foundry industry, is still actively developed and fully supported by a team of scientists, engineers and technicians. In the later years, works were conducted toward optimizing the process and equipment. At first, the focus was on developing a simplified version of the SEED process to eliminate the so-called drainage phase while preserving the prime quality of the slurry produced. Improvement of some system components and integration of new features were also targeted to secure the overall equipment efficiency (OEE) and increase the process reliability. This work, backed with the optimization of process parameters and comprehensive techniques adapted for semi-solid casting, led to the consolidation and even improvement of the properties of the parts produced for common foundry alloys as 356/357 and 319. Furthermore, the non-drained SEED version was applied to the validation of the process capabilities for uncommon cast alloys, with works on AA6061 wrought alloys, high strength 206 cast alloys and Duralcan metal matrix composites. The results confirmed that the SEED process can efficiently be used in non-drained mode and achieve the same quality of slurry as the drained-mode version originally developed.