Zyomax Ltd. has been established to exploit a family of technologies invented by Professor Zhongyun Fan and his team at Brunel University’s BCAST Centre. These technologies can be described generically as ‘rheo processing technologies’ and are based on the ability to produce a range of metals and alloys in the form of a semi-solid slurry that can be used as the feedstock for a variety of metal processing techniques.

The key to the technology is a patented twin-screw device capable of delivering discrete quantities of semi-solid slurry. This material is an ideal feedstock for die-casting, and laboratory scale trials with magnesium and aluminium alloys have demonstrated that die cast components of consistently high quality can be made this way. Due to the properties of the semi-solid slurry, the cast products produced using this semi-solid feedstock are vastly superior to components produced using traditional die-casting techniques.

The technology is not limited to batch processing, and by accumulating the output from multiple slurry generators the semi-solid slurry can be used as the feedstock for continuous processes such as DC rheo-casting, and twin roll rheo-casting.