Basicly, the die casting process is obtained by injecting molten metal under high pressure into a steel mold called a die.The earliest application of die casting by pressure injection occurred in the mid-1800s. Some years after, in 1849, Sturges was patented for the first manually operated machine for casting printing type. After these first steps, in the early 1900s, a great number of mass items began to be produced through this special method. Year in and year out, the die casting process evolved from the original low-pressure injection method to modern techniques including high-pressure casting. Nowdays, these processes are very used by manifacturing industries because, in this way, they are capable of producing high integrity, near net-shape castings with excellent surface finishes. However, the evolution of this production method is still going on now and it is stretching out to the future: thanks to the refinements that continue to characterize the process itself, die casting applications are now used into almost every known market. This great success is connected to the fact that pressure die-casting dies are strong, durable and dimensionally precise.
Certainly, it is possible to state that without pressure die castings the world we live in today would be very different.  This particular production method is, in fact, applied to produce a large quantity of relatively small parts: aluminium castings, for example, can be found in most vehicles in use today from cars, buses, trains, to ships, aircraft and spacecraft.  Thanks to the big variety of aluminium alloys available, many manufacturing industries can now select materials characterized by a good strength and a good corrosion resistance and by other peculiar properties.  An important aspect is that nearly 60% of aluminium castings are used in transport applications. This is not a case because, especially in this period of energy conservation, the advantages of lightweight aluminium outweighs the initial cost of the material, particularly if we take into consideration all the transport applications where light weight means less fuel.  During the working life of transport vehicles, if their overall weight is reduced by the use of aluminium castings rather than, for example, cast iron, the important consequence is represented by a lowered total fuel consumption.

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