30% lighter than aluminum, comparable strength, and increasingly cost-competitive at volume. If you're still defaulting to aluminum, it's worth a conversation.
Most engineers lean toward plastics or aluminum, but have you considered magnesium? Magnesium is 30% lighter than aluminum and twice the strength at the same thickness, while achieving cost parity with aluminum at volume. It has been used for years in automotive seat frames, housings, power tools, and laptops. It is not new, it is just coming into its own with the push for lighter designs.
What makes GTI truly unique is our vast experience with magnesium manufacturing: thixomolding, die casting, and CNC machining, for a broad customer base. Greg Raleigh is one of the top magnesium manufacturing engineers on the planet. GTI will walk you through the process whether the end result is die casting, thixomolding, or machining.
Contact us to find out more| Property | Magnesium | Aluminum |
|---|---|---|
| Weight | Lighter by 30% | Baseline |
| Strength-to-weight | Higher | — |
| Cost at volume | Parity | Baseline |
| EMI/RFI shielding | Native | Requires treatment |
| Machinability | Excellent | Excellent |
Depending on your part geometry, volume, and program requirements, the right manufacturing process varies.
High-pressure injection of semi-molten Mg alloy. Best for complex, thin-walled, high-precision parts at medium-to-high volume. Think plastic injection molding, but in metal.
Details →Traditional high-pressure die casting in magnesium. Well-suited for larger parts where thixomolding tooling economics don't make sense.
Details →Fully machined Mg parts for prototypes, low-volume production, or secondary machining of castings. Our Mg machining runs out of Puerto Rico and China.
Details →Thermal characteristics of magnesium are comparable to aluminum, which makes it a solid candidate for heat sink applications at significantly lower weight. GTI has produced hundreds of heat sinks in both magnesium and aluminum and can help optimize designs for both mechanical and thermal performance.
Great thermal dissipation plus lower weight equals a better heat sink story.
Contact us to learn more"Replacing aluminum structures and heat sinks with magnesium reduced weight by 50%, provided improved strength, and was crucial to making our LED headlamp commercially viable. Heat dissipation was superior. Eliminating the need to protect for corrosion was a bonus."
A detailed overview of how to integrate magnesium into your designs, with material data, process comparisons, and application examples.
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