There is a journalistic truism that one incident is not necessarily news, and two may be a coincidence, but three similar developments indicate a trend. If a liquor store gets robbed on Friday, no news. If another one gets hit on Saturday, that’s not unusual. When the third one gets knocked over you have a crime spree.

In the past few weeks we’ve discovered two intriguing examples of multi-alloy casting. Neither one of these is a random development: both have been well researched and tested, to the point where they have commercial implications. I’m not sure we need to wait for the third to conclude that the sky’s the limit for such techniques.

The Camito process is a method of compositing gray iron with tool steel, and already has been commercialized by Novacast Technologies AB.  

Eck Industries in Manitowoc, WI, has licensed the Cast-Decant-Cast process, and expects to begin producing prototype castings by September 1. It’s a technology developed by Dr. David Brown at University College Dublin, in Ireland.

The “novelty” of combining disparate metals or alloys into a single product has significant implications for product design, and product development.

The idea is not limited to cast shapes, either: Novelis (until a few years ago it was the rolled products division of Alcan Inc.) introduced its Fusion just about two years ago, and already has expanded its commercial production from North America to Europe and the Far East, and recently announced plans to add it in South America.

“Fusion” involves casting differing alloys into a single ingot, in such a way that the subsequent rolling of the ingot creates aluminum sheet with different, but complimentary metallurgical properties. For example, the sheet can have internal characteristics that enhance formability, but surface qualities that improve heat resistance.

Much of what concerns metalcasters lately centers on ongoing operations. Cost and energy savings, for example, or environmental or labor policies. But, growing the market for cast products may be even more important to advancing the industry. Giving metalcasters new capabilities gives designers new opportunities to create products, and thus to grow markets.  Advances in metallurgy and metallurgical processes are critical to advancing these opportunities. Let’s hope it’s a trend.