Archive: 2019

Productivity losses can quickly kill a machine shop’s productivity margin. Narrow enough already because of high material costs and increasingly unmanageable overhead problems, that manufacturing facility can’t afford a run of rejected products. To correct that issue on a food processing line, some tweaks to the recipe would take care of matters. For punch and […]

Slug pulling occurs when a “slug” gets stuck to a punch as it’s pulling back from a strike. The tool pierced a panel of sheet metal, the slug (punched scrap) separated from the sheet, but it hasn’t dropped free. In lieu of the expected scrap removal action, the ejected waste clings to the tool. This […]

Seen in action, a metal cutting “shear” slices through sheet metal sections in a single cut. By comparison, an industrial saw is a less effective fabrication tool, one that takes time to route its cuts. Needless to say, that all-at-once shearing action takes its toll. Clearly, if a high-production metal forming workshop is to sustain […]

Seeking out punching precision, an engineering formula assures success. Procedurally, the factors accumulate as lots of smaller steps, not as some grand giant corrective leap. For instance, starting with a vital process optimizing initiative, we can use reverse-analysis testing to see how safe a punching tool is performing. We do this, not by examining the […]

A material-dense punch and die combo can absorb a great deal of punishment. Pushed to its limits, however, even a high-quality tool combo will chip. The overall piston-rolling strength of the tool holds out for a while longer. The impact-driven backbone crashes down resolutely, but the chipping effect propagates. Left like this, the output coming […]

Without die clearance tolerances, punching strokes would become woefully inaccurate. The equipment could still send the punch operation downwards accurately, with the tool moving as if it were on an invisible rail, but a poorly configured die-to-punch gap would then deflect the stroke before it made contact. To forestall such undesirable process results, equipment techs […]

Computer Aided Design involves program design space, parametric models, and proprietary software packages. By itself, this field of engineering can’t create a real-world product. Enter Computer Aided Manufacturing (CAM), with its machine codes and automated machinery. This is the second half of a computer-aided design and manufacturing process that’s currently revolutionizing the machine shop industry. […]

Diamonds are the hardest naturally occurring material known to man. They’re used on drill bits and abrasive cutting blades to carry out all sorts of tough tooling jobs. Other materials, even tough carbides, find that kind of work next to impossible to emulate. Unsurprisingly, and this development is set to revolutionize the industry, diamond-like carbon […]

As that first word infers, Progressive Stamping Die stations use a sequential approach. One operation is carried out, then the next stage is initiated, and then the next, and so on, until a fabrication run is complete. Being as how this is a chain of intimately connected actions, the slightest deviation in that chain could […]

Imagine how a mechanical punch would perform if it was overlooked. Now try picturing that same uncaring attitude as applied to a shearing machine. The high-performance, high-precision equipment eventually falls into disrepair. No surprise there, then. What choice is there now? The machine shop stops and experiences an unproductive period of downtime until the punch […]