A Report on Metal Forming Technology Transfer from Expert to Industry for Improving Production Efficiency

This article reports on technological mastery assistance in three small metal forming industries in Indonesia. Problems in the blangking and piercing separately process caused increased production time which resulted in inefficiency cost. Therefore, the expert team aided in metal forming technology through participatory action research (PAR) methods and experimental methods through reverse engineering for several products. The PAR method involves optimal contribution and participation from the industry. Assistance in mastering technology in small metal-forming industries reduces the manufacturing process from seven to three stages, increasing efficiency. The press machine's tonnage capacity must balance with the force blanking/piercing requirement. The minimum press machine requirement is 6.7 tons, and based on the availability of existing press machines, the expert team recommends a 20-ton capacity press machine. Total efficiency can be further increased by implementing full progressive die technology by combining piercing, blanking, and bending processes.

Modelling and Manufacturing of Progressive die for Mechanical Press Operations

A progressive die is a type of die in which multiple operations performed in a single stroke, which was mostly used in sheet metal operations. The working process of sheet metal is widely used in all manufacturing industries such as mechanical, defense and automotive etc. The key advantage of metal working process involves enhancement of production rate and cost reduction. This paper is aimed to develop a multi-functional die which can perform simultaneously both punching and blanking operations in one stroke. The present work is mainly focused on modeling and manufacturing of the die components, where PRO-E was used for modelling and FANUC controlled CNC machine was used to execute and prepared part program.

Design and Analysis of an Industrial, Progressive Die for Cutting and Forming

Nowadays, many components which were earlier cast or machined have now been replaced by steel metal stampings. Material economy and the resultant reduction in weight and cost, high productivity and a high degree of possible precision have made press-work essential for many mass-produced products such as electronic appliances, utensils and car parts. Although, laser-cut technology is widely developed and more flexible in terms of variety of produced components, it cannot reach the extremely high productivity rates of a progressive die. Progressive die can perform a sequence of operations, in different stations at a single stroke of press. In this work, an innovative progressive die consists of two stations was designed, in order to produce a complex metal part with three different manufacturing processes. The components of the die have been calculated by mathematical formulas and empirical data, designed with Computer Aided Design software and analyzed by Finite Element Analysis tool.

Optimization of strip-layout using graph-theoretic methodology for stamping operations on progressive die: a case study

The design of the progressive die stamping process is optimized through minimizing the number of die stamping stations in the strip layout to reduce the die cost. In order to accomplish such end, in this study, a graph-theoretic based method is implemented to model and optimize the strip layout design. This method starts with mapping stamping features into stamping operations. This step is followed by constructing two graphs to model the precedence and adjacency constraints among stamping operations based on a set of manufacturing rules. These two graphs are called: operation precedence graph and operation adjacency graph. In the next step, a topological sorting algorithm clusters the operations into partially ordered sets. Then, a graph coloring algorithm clusters the partially ordered operations sets into final sequence of operations. The graph-theoretic technique has been implemented on a part currently manufactured by laser cutting process technology in some Egyptian factory in Cairo. This study indicated that the graph-theoretic technique offers several advantages including the ease of programming and transparency in understanding the obtained strip layout design. This is besides being a systematic and logically approach to obtain an optimized strip layout design. In general, the progressive die manufacturing can increase productivity of sheet metal works in Egypt, only in situations of mass production. The limitation is that it requires considerable skill level and training for labor to conduct die strip layout design.

Modelling, Analysis and Development of Progressive Die for Seat Rail

Progressive dies are highly used in batch productions where product variety is low. The progressive die is also called follow on die. It performs series of basic sheet metal operations. There are two or more stations and work piece is gradually shaped to final product through passing each of these stations. The ‘progression’ (advance or pitch) is linear travel of the strip stock at each press stroke and it is equal to the infestation distance. In the present paper an attempt is made to develop a new progressive die, which used in making seat rail of an automotive four-wheeler vehicle of Toyota, to optimize the use of material. So, the cost of progressive die reduces without losing its quality. For modelling CATIA and for analysis ANSYS are used.