Archive: Sep 2024

Metal Stamping Materials Explained

Metal stamping involves the process of forming metal into desired shapes using techniques such as punching, blanking, bending, coining, and more. Used in industries ranging from automotive to medical, construction, and more, metal stamping offers a cost-effective way of producing parts in large volumes.

When choosing the best material for metal stamping, it’s important to consider the complexity of the final product and the characteristics you need it to exhibit. Copper, steel, and aluminum alloys are all common material options for metal stamping. Here, we will describe each material and its benefits to help you determine which metal is right for your next metal stamping project.

Choosing the Best Metal for Stamping

The material you choose for your metal stamping project greatly affects the final outcome of the finished product. To ensure that you select the right metal based on your project’s requirements, it’s important to ask yourself the following questions:

• How much does the material cost and will it fit into your project’s budget?
• Will the material be easy to work and shape into the desired product?
• How strong and durable does the material need to be?
• What sort of environmental conditions will the material need to withstand?
• What long-term benefits does the material need to offer?
• How will clients use the finished product?

By answering the above questions, you can narrow down your search for the appropriate metal stamping material. Since there are so many material options, it can be challenging to find the one with the exact characteristics you need. Because of this, it’s always a good idea to work with a trusted metal stamping manufacturer, as they have the necessary knowledge and experience to guide you toward the best material for your needs.

Copper Alloys for Metal Stamping

Copper and its alloys, like brass and bronze, have appealing characteristics that make them ideal for many metal stamping projects. They’re too soft for products requiring strength and durability, but that softness makes them easy to form into complex shapes and incredibly thin components. Benefits that make copper alloys popular for metal stamping include:

• Electrical and thermal conductivity
• Corrosion resistance
• Very good malleability
• UV radiation and temperature resistance
• Antimicrobial
• Decorative

Steel Alloys for Metal Stamping

Strong and versatile, steel is one of the most common metal stamping materials. Steel can be alloyed with various other metals to enhance specific physical properties. Steel can also be treated before or after the metal stamping process to increase hardness or corrosion resistance. Benefits of using steel alloys for metal stamping include:

• Magnetic (except for most stainless steel)
• Strong (with varying degrees of strength depending on the alloy)
• Cost-effective and easy to obtain
• Can be treated to enhance certain properties
• Corrosion resistance

High-Strength Low-Alloy (HSLA) Steels in Stamping

High-strength low-alloy (HSLA) steel is prevalent in metal stamping processes, offering various beneficial properties for stamping product applications. Instead of being designed to meet certain chemical composition requirements, HSLA steels are made to deliver predetermined mechanical characteristics. Compared to carbon steel, for example, this alloy material offers enhanced mechanical properties and corrosion resistance.

Advantages in Stamping Applications

HSLA steel offers various advantages that can be bolstered by adjusting the composition of the metal. The primary benefits of HSLA steel include its higher yield strength, toughness, resistance to corrosion, cost-efficiency, and enhanced compatibility with forming and welding processes.

Industry Applications

Given its unique combination of advantageous characteristics, HSLA steel offers widespread application flexibility. Industries like the aerospace, automotive, and construction sectors, for instance, prize HSLA steel for its optimal strength-to-weight ratio. The material is a good option for reducing weight in products like wheels, suspension systems, chassis, subframes, and seat runners for vehicles while maintaining their durability and longevity.

Advanced High-Strength Steels (AHSS)

There are three types of advanced high-strength steels (AHSS) that manufacturers use in metal fabrication and stamping operations:

• Dual-phase (DP). These steels are made up of islands of hard-phase martensite surrounded by a soft, continuous-phase ferrite matrix. A continuous-phase material is visually distinct in the material structure or is mechanically separable.
• TRIP. Part of the high-strength steel alloy class, TRIP is suitable for automotive, marine, and naval applications.
• Martensitic. This stainless steel variety performs well in applications in which corrosion resistance, strength, and durability are important.

Benefits and Challenges

AHSS offer superior strength as compared to low-strength steel, so they’re an optimal choice for load-bearing applications. However, before selecting AHSS for your metal stamping project, be sure to consider the following material challenges:

• Strength versus cost. AHSS are costlier than lower-strength varieties. For structural fabrication projects or those that don’t necessitate AHSS’ level of strength, low-strength steel would be more cost-effective.
• Welding considerations. If your project requires welding, keep in mind that you may have to preheat the AHSS material.
• Sufficient force. Stamping or forming AHSS requires that you apply greater force than with other materials.

Industry Applications

Metal stamping can rapidly and precisely generate high volumes of durable, uniform, tight-tolerance components from AHSS and related materials. Advanced high-strength steel stampings are ideal for applications in the following industries:

• Automotive
• Electronics
• Appliances
• Industrial equipment
• Construction
• Medical
• Consumer products

Aluminum Alloys for Metal Stamping

Aluminum alloys for metal stamping offer an excellent strength-to-weight ratio, making them popular in the automotive and construction industries, among others. Though often more expensive than steel alloys, aluminum alloys exhibit good corrosion resistance and long lifespans. Aluminum offers the following benefits for metal stamping:

• Flexible and malleable, making it easy to form into complex shapes without becoming brittle
• Electrical and thermal conductivity
• Corrosion resistance
• Low-maintenance finish
• Rust-resistant
• Less raw material is required for metal stamping

Specialty Metals and Alloys in Stamping

In addition to copper, steel, and aluminum, multiple specialty materials are compatible with metal stamping processes, including the following:

• Titanium. A readily available, lightweight, and corrosion-resistant stamping material, titanium is a versatile metal with characteristics suited to a variety of applications and industries. Manufacturers can use deep draw stamping to cold-form titanium into simply shaped, deep components.
• Nickel alloys. Offering superior strength to withstand extreme environmental conditions, nickel alloys are ideal for aerospace components. However, the mechanical properties of superalloys can make them harder to work with.
• Magnesium. Magnesium alloy lends its applications impressive dimensional stability and damping capacity, all at one-fourth and two-thirds the weights of steel and aluminum, respectively. The material is a suitable replacement for these metals as well as acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene (ABS) plastic in applications like manufacturing vehicle components. Without risking passenger safety, lightweight magnesium reduces overall automotive weight along with fuel consumption and emissions.

Partner with Aranda Tooling for your Metal Stamping Needs

Many materials are suitable for the metal stamping process, so it’s important to consider the needs of your application to narrow down your selection. If you’re not sure which one is right for you, turn to the professionals at Aranda Tooling. With over four decades of experience offering metal stamping and fabrication services, our experienced staff has the knowledge to help you find the best metal stamping materials for your project.

For help with your material selection process, or to get started on your next metal stamping project, contact us or request a quote today.

Sheet Metal Stamping Process Explained

The process of turning sheets of metal into a useful part or component is called sheet metal stamping. The metal is fed into a press, where the stamping tool, also known as a die, creates the desired shape. The die is pressed into or through the metal with tremendous force. The force used in the process is measured in tons.
Except for some specialized processes, sheet metal stamping doesn’t use heat. Instead, it is done with a cold-forming technique. Even though no heat is used, the part can come out hot because of the friction that’s created between the metal and the die from the force of the press.

What Is Sheet Metal Stamping?

Sheet Metal Stamping Process

There are basically only three components to sheet metal stamping—the sheet metal, die, and press machine—but any single part can require multiple steps to arrive at its final form. The following guide explains a few common processes that might occur during metal stamping.

• Forming: Forming describes the process of transforming the flat metal into another shape by applying force. It is accomplished in one of several ways, depending on the design specifications for the part. With a series of operations, the metal can be altered from a relatively simple shape into a complex one.
• Blanking: Blanking is the most basic technique and initiates when the sheet or blank is fed into the press where the die cuts out the desired shape. The resulting piece is called a blank. The blank may be the desired part, also known as a fully finished blank, or it may continue to the subsequent step of forming.
• Drawing: Drawing is a more complicated operation and is how vessels or deep depressions are formed. Tension is used to carefully draw the material into a cavity to change its shape. Though the material might stretch while it’s drawn, technicians try to avoid stretching as much as possible to keep the material intact. Sinks, cooking equipment, and oil pans for vehicles are usually made with drawing.
• Piercing: Piercing is almost the opposite of blanking, but instead of saving the blanks, technicians use the material around the outside of the punched area. As an example, think of cutting biscuits from a rolled-out circle of dough. During blanking, the biscuits are saved; during piercing, on the other hand, the biscuits are discarded, and the hole-riddled remains are the desired outcome.

Role of Dies in Metal Stamping

Whether you’re using the forming, drawing, piercing, or blanking process in sheet metal for your project, production will involve metal dies. Mounted on presses, dies are the fundamental tools that metal stamping operations rely on to precisely cut, form, and shape an array of metal parts. Manufacturers use custom dies to achieve components that match the exact specifications of your design, making anything from straightforward products like clips to intricate electronic parts.

These durable tools facilitate high-volume, precision production and support economy of scale. To help ensure that metal stamping processes are generating high-quality products, however, it’s important to use the right die type for your project.

Types of Dies

To address the unique requirements of highly varied projects, there are multiple types of die available for manufacturers to use. Three common varieties in metal stamping operations are compound, combination, and progressive dies.

Compound

Compound dies provide compound functionality—every single press stroke carries out several operations at once. As a result, they can quickly and efficiently generate even complex metal parts. When choosing a die for your needs, keep in mind that compound dies are more adept at cutting than forming.

Combination

Combination dies are alike compound dies in their single-stroke operational capabilities. However, this die variety is well-suited to both forming and cutting. This enables manufacturers to use them for products that require multiple metal forming techniques, such as bending, forming, piercing, and sheet metal blanking processes.

Progressive

These cold stamping dies move a strip of raw material through its various stations, with the die performing one stamping action per stroke at each one. The metal workpieces stay attached to the strip until they pass through the final die station, at which time they’re complete and cut loose. In this setup, multiple workpieces are going through the press simultaneously, with each at a different stage of the stamping process on a mold set.

Understanding Metal Stamping Presses

Just as there are multiple die types, you can use different press varieties to complete your stamping project. The three main options are:

• Mechanical presses: These highly efficient presses utilize a motor-connected flywheel device to facilitate energy transfer and storage. They’re compatible with progressive and transfer die stamping processes and can produce between 20 and 6,000 tons of pressing force, depending on their size. Manufacturers can quickly ramp up production as mechanical presses offer the greatest operational speeds of the three presses and have the capacity for large runs of virtually identical, repeatable goods. Mechanical presses rapidly generate shallow components with simple designs from coil and sheet metal, such as hardware and appliance or automotive components.
• Hydraulic presses: Compared to mechanical presses, hydraulic presses are slower but more versatile. They enable you to modify the die opening and stroke length and deliver a wider range of pressure levels. This accommodates deeper, more intricately shaped components requiring higher material flow. As long as your project’s schedule allows for this production method, hydraulic presses are the ideal choice for producing goods like bowls, cylinders, and tanks.
• Mechanical servo presses: These presses combine the advantageous features of the previous two types, offering nearly the same speeds as mechanical presses with the versatility of hydraulic presses. Programmable mechanical servo presses, however, also heighten your ability to control everything from strokes and operational speeds to slide motion and positioning. These capabilities give manufacturers more flexibility in part production as well as their choice of press speed and die type.

The ideal metal pressing process service provider will have the equipment, custom capabilities, and extensive expertise you need to sufficiently achieve your project goals.

Precision Metal Stamping Services From Aranda Tooling, Inc.

When your industry requires high-caliber precision parts, you need a stamping company that meets the most stringent quality standards. Aranda Tooling, an ISO 9001:2015-registered company, has been manufacturing precision tools for companies worldwide since 1975. Today, we produce over 1 million highly detailed parts every week for even the most technologically advanced applications.

To find out more about our stamping services, please visit our services page, or request a quote online. If you have any questions, contact us at Aranda Tooling, Inc. today.