Arme S.A., a Colombian service center, was producing cut blanks for several local, small customers using a 48-year-old Stamco cut-to-length line purchased more than 20 years ago. It served them well over the years, but the company realized it needed to upgrade its technology to take advantage of the market opportunities it saw growing around them.

Global competition continues to force the metal forming industry to reduce costs, improve technology, and increase productivity. With these trends in mind, the Ohio State University (OSU) and Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) established in June 2006 the Center for Precision Forming to focus on the needs of the metal forming industry.

This article is one of a 16-part series on the fundamentals of stamping. Descriptions of all the articles in this series, and links to them, can be found at the end of this article.

To stay competitive, stampers must be prepared to run a variety of dies, many of which have been designed to run on customized and complex OEM equipment. In addition, stamping concepts tend to differ among the automotive OEMs. For the tier stamper, flexibility is key to surviving these fiercely competitive times.

The ERC/NSM conducted extensive deep-drawing tests to evaluate various dry film lubricants for several companies. Compared with other commonly used friction tests such as draw bead and twist compression tests, deep drawing emulates realistic friction conditions that exist in stamping operations in terms of the pressure and forming speed interface .

Determining the best die geometry to produce multicontoured formed parts can be difficult. A full understanding of the drawing and stretching process is necessary, as well as a good understanding of all tooling factors to make complex geometries.