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Magnesium alloy die castings provide opportunities for designing low weight, cost efficient solutions based upon a fully recyclable material. These incentives are highly attractive for the automotive industry. It should be emphasized that the majority of published and tabulated data on properties of magnesium die castings does not reflect the recent advances in alloy chemistry and die casting technology. In the present paper a summary is presented of mechanical and physical data of magnesium die casting alloys. The properties are representative for test bars produced under well controlled conventional cold chamber casting conditions. It should be stressed that further refinement of the casting technology (vacuum assisted casting etc.) can further enhance the mechanical properties. Fatigue properties are still under evaluation and will be reported separately.

Inclusion types and methods for inclusion assessment in magnesium and magnesium base alloys are reviewed. In pure magnesium oxides are the dominating inclusion type, while in alloys e.g. AM60 and AZ91D intermetallic particles may be equally dominant. Inclusion assessment may consist of sampling, followed by quantitative microscopy of parts of the sample, giving number size distributions and/or total contents of each particle type. In refined metal it is difficult to obtain results with statistical significance unless inclusions from a large volume are preconcentrated. In a recent method reflected light from a fracture sample is examined and inclusion content is represented by a number only. Emerging technologies include adaption of LiMCA to magnesium. No methods satisfy requirements related to rapid response, ability to distinguish between particle types, satisfactory resolution, large sample size and low cost.