What is metal stamping?
Metal components can be fabricated in a mass volume by a variety processes such as sand casting, metal die casting, machining etc. One of the more economical and common processes used for making sheet metal parts is by metal stamping.
Metal stamping process, which in general involves taking a flat raw metal sheet, cut and form or bend it into the required shape and size. Product such as Mounting brackets, casing, electronic connectors for instance. metal stamping process is the most cost-effective process that permits metal parts to be manufactured at a high production rates. Production speed can be ranging from 40 to 2000 parts per minute.
In a metal stamping process, a sheet of metal stock material in fixed thickness and width is introduced into a stamping press. The stamping press can be either a mechanical or hydraulically driven depend of it process requirement. A stamping tool in two half are mounted on the press machine, the upper part of the tool is so call punch and the lower part is called die. The punch and die will be moving up and down with the press machine ram to cut and form the stock material into the final shape and size.
Press machine can be as small as 10 tons and as large as 800 tons. The mechanical driven press are usually run in a faster speed than the hydraulically driven. The Hydraulic press usually provides heavier tonnage than a mechanical one.
In general, The sheet metal has been cut to the required shape and size by a blanking tool and subsequently transfer to other presses and tools to perform the secondary process such as piercing, forming or bending, the process will be repeated under the final form is achieved.
The whole operation is done by manually loading and unloading, in some cases, robot transfer arms are installed in the production line to replace all manual work, all metal parts are transfer by robot. The tool designed in such, we called it a transfer tool.
Because the single transfer process requires frequent changing of tooling or press machine, it is usually not economical to runs large volume production batch. A progressive tool is introduced to runs the complex component within one single stamping tool and press.
A progressive tool consists of all the operations within a tool, imagine, all single stamping tools are to align in a fix distance within the tool. Each tool is called a station. Raw material in coil form will than introduced into the tool by either a mechanical or electronic control feeder to feed sheet metal in the tool.
The different between a transfer tool and a progressive tool is usually the transfer tools are larger in size, it may requires a few press machines at one time. As for the progressive tool, tooling is smaller in size and runs on only one press machine.
Two location pins in each station locate the metal part precisely to ensure the accuracy of the stamped parts in a progressive tool. The location pin we called it a Pilot pin.
Progressive tool is commonly used in the metal stamping industries.
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