TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – Lightweight metals manufacturer Alcoa on Thursday unveiled its breakthrough manufacturing technology, the Alcoa Micromill, that would manufacture the most advanced aluminium sheet on the market, enabling the company to capture growing demand for next generation automotive aluminium products.

The Alcoa-patented Micromill process dramatically changed the microstructure of the metal, allowing the production of an aluminium alloy for automotive applications that has 40% greater formability and 30% greater strength than the current aluminium used, while meeting stringent automotive surface-quality requirements.

Automotive parts made with Micromill material would be twice as formable and at least 30% lighter than parts made from high-strength steel. The Micromill alloy has formability characteristics comparable to mild steels.

A Micromill aluminium sheet was 40% more formable and easier to shape into intricate forms, such as the inside panels of automobile doors and external fenders, which today are generally made of steel. The 30% increase in material strength would improve dent resistance, enabling the production of automotive sheet that is thinner and even lighter than previous generations. Automakers would also benefit from reduced system cost by streamlining the number of aluminium alloys used in their manufacturing process.

It would also be the fastest, most productive aluminium casting and rolling system in the world. A traditional rolling mill currently took around 20 days to turn molten metal into coil, Micromill did this in just 20 minutes, Alcoa said.

The Micromill also had a significantly smaller footprint than a traditional rolling mill, at just one-quarter the size, and lowered energy use by 50%. More than 130 patents around the world currently covered the Alcoa Micromill technology and the differentiated metal it would produce.

According to Ducker Worldwide, North American aluminium automotive sheet content per vehicle was expected to increase elevenfold between 2012 and 2025 as consumers demanded cars that were lighter and more fuel efficient. The Micromill continuous casting technology was designed to meet that growing demand for automotive sheet, with the flexibility to serve the industrial and packaging markets as well. The mill could easily shift product mix and transition to different alloys without ever stopping a cast.

Alcoa had secured a strategic development customer and from its pilot Micromill facility in San Antonio, Texas, had also conducted successful customer trials. Those trials had validated the Micromill material’s unique characteristics, surface quality for exterior panels and overall performance. Alcoa was qualifying the material for use in next-generation automotive platforms.