Monday, June 4, 2012

The Concept Of Sheet Metal Stampings

By Tommie Newman


In construction, one of the major processes in modifying metal into various forms as required is known as stamping. This is a term used to refer to a number of processes performed on metal stocks to form sheet metal stampings. These processes are mainly drawing, piercing, blanking and forming. These processes utilize specialized equipment, a concept called hard tooling. This equipment includes stamping dies and presses and is used to achieve varying shapes.

Dies are indispensable tools when it comes to stamping. There are two parts in a die: the male and the female part. These two parts move in opposition when making holes on metal. They carry out this task in two different ways, namely cutting and forming. Notably, forming includes four main activities that are bending, hemming, drawing and flanging.

The most significant factor to consider when choosing metals for stamping is formability. This is the capability of metal to undergo stretching, bending or drawing. The term is sometimes used interchangeably with ductility, though the latter mostly refers to the ability of the metal to elongate and deform without fracture.

There are a number of factors that affect a stampings formability. Top on this list are the geometry and shape. Formability varies directly with the shape and geometry of dies and presses. Other factors affecting the final product include the speed of the press, designs of the die and the press, monitoring and control systems, and lubrication.

Another important aspect of stamping is lubrication. The need for this emerges since there is resistance of the sheet metal stock to the action of the moving dies, creating friction. Lubrication minimizes the contact between the tooling and the work piece. Such lubricants range from light mineral oils to high viscosity drawing compounds.

It is not always that stamping processes result in a perfect part. More often than not, another process called Circle Grid Analysis is applied to fine tune the resulting sheet metal stampings. This process enables identification of flaws in the dies, hence working on them until an acceptable part is achieved.




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