An overview of the induction reheating technique for SSM billet is introduced and analyzed systematically. Reheating is the key link in SSM process. The accurately controlled reheating temperature is critical for billet formation because thixocasting is sensitive to solid fraction. In order to minimize heating cycle time under the maximum softening rate and minimize "elephant foot" effect

it is necessary to improve the heating system design to decrease the thermal diffusion along the top and bottom surface of the billet and temperature drop during billet transfer from induction heating system to shoot sleeve of injection machine. Because there are no reliable methods to measure quantitatively over softening of billet

it is difficult to improve reheating system only by great deal of experiments. It is the prior choice to optimize the reheating parameters with numerical simulation and experimental investigation in lab.