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Stamp Sheet

Metal Stamping Offers a Lean Industry Model With Parts of Steel

Metalworking technology is advancing at such a rate that super strong and flexible metals are being introduced to produce parts that are a quantum leap forward from what we are used to. Computer control of processes ensure microscopic accuracy of production, a major key to profitability for metal stamping companies.

This article discusses the importance of accuracy in the precision metal stamping industry, a favorite cost-effective method of shaping steel that used to be done by the more expensive and environmentally dangerous method of forging that has largely been outsourced to the third world. When manufacturers aim for optimal lean operations, every fraction of measurement, every gram of material, and every tick of the clock must be accounted for when large production runs are involved. The overall lost performance of any application will be multiplied on such a large scale that tightening the operation to its utmost efficiency is mandatory to realize substantial profits.

Precision sheet metal work is a big part of the science of metalworking; metal stamping is the processes of punching, blanking, piercing, embossing, drawing, bending, forming, flanging, and coining metals into required shapes that will be parts of a larger structure. Metal gets fed and pressed between high tonnage stamping dies. The metal stamping industry has evolved from simple punch presses to ever more efficient presses that use robotics, in-die sensors, and video inspection systems.

Quality assurance is all-important to maintain cost-effectiveness over large production runs to turn out parts for industries such as automotive, optics, medical devices, aerospace, and armaments. Defects have become easy to spot thanks to video inspection systems that can magnify parts up to 240 times their size. Aluminum, stainless steel, beryllium, brass, titanium, Mylar, spring steel, Teflon, polystyrene, and cold rolled steel are some of the materials that can be shaped with stamping presses.

Some metal stamping presses can reach gigantic proportions when the need exists. The Savannah Morning News carried a story about a new metal press for Kia Motors that arrived at the Port of Savannah April 12, 2011 that is so massive a major transportation effort was needed to transfer it in pieces after a month-long voyage from Pyeongtaek, Korea across the Pacific and through the Panama Canal. Some of the heavier pieces weighed up to 170 tons and required a special fleet of trucks to transport them 300 miles inland. Once assembled it will be a 5,400-ton transfer press that will stamp sheet metal into 17 different types of vehicle body panels, including hoods, doors and fenders at the Kia plant in West Georgia. Metal stamping machinery in the automotive industry is used for the production of vehicle body parts, metal bumpers, fenders, hubcaps, moldings, and trims.

The technology of shaping metal has also stretched its effectiveness to smaller, more delicate functions. Today's technology can read like science fiction when companies use the process of EDM, sometimes called "spark machining", where an ultra thin brass wire can cut through the hardest metals, as long as they are electrically conductive. Tooling components are cut by wire 'electrical discharge' machines," says Ken Wojcik, Vice President of Operations for Kenmode Tool & Engineering of Crystal Lake Illinois: "Using electricity directed through wire twice the thickness of a human hair, these EDM machines are capable of cutting intricate shapes in steel and carbide in very close tolerance." A series of continuous electrical discharges passing through the wire removes the metal; the wire doesn't contact the steel directly. The EDM process can cut the very hardest metals; for this reason electrical discharge machining us used to make the actual dies and moulds used in stamping. Due to higher expense of operation EDM is preferred to make prototypes and low volumes of production parts.

Bringing things down to the molecular level, nano-engineered sheet metal is now being produced that has strength and flexibility far beyond what was thought possible. Automakers see a great future in such material since the nano-fine particles making up the steel will allow it to stretch instead of breaking upon impact. The coming years may see nanotechnology enter the cost-effective zone for mass production.

About the Author

Pat Boardman is an SEO consultant writing in respect to Taurus Stampings of London Ontario who do light metal assembly and custom metal stamping processes such as deep drawing and difficult forms in sheet metal stamping.