Metal stamping is a type of metal working that has been around for decades. It involves shaping various metals into specific shapes or parts through multiple stages of compressive deformation. The stamping process works by applying an external force over a single work piece or metal sheet which can be made up of different alloys, each having their own degree of malleability.
Various types of metal stamping materials can be used in order to produce stamped metal parts and goods with greater strength, durability, mass-proportion, and performance without changing the weight significantly.
Stamped metal parts play a major role in today’s manufacturing
Products produced by metal stamping companies like Evans Metal Stamping, Inc are part of virtually every part of our lives where metal parts are used. From medical supply tooling to construction tools to decorative emblems and major structural components in automobile manufacturing… Metal stamping plays a major role in production.
Manufacturing has become highly specialized with the evolution of various techniques, advanced stamping presses and different materials used for stamping. By using the finest metals available for stamping, manufacturers can provide customers with high quality products in mass quantities and in a timely manner.
Most common types of metal stamping used when stamping products
The two most commonly used techniques used in modern day manufacturing are progressive die metal stamping and transfer die stamping. Both of these techniques have specific processes that make them unique. Depending on the size of stamped work piece, complexity, material and quantity needed, the manufacturer decides which technique to use.
The progressive stamping process at Evans Tool & Die
Progressive metal stamping is a manufacturing process involving the progressive deformation of an object by successively applying compressive force. It has also been known to be referred to as progressive die sinking and owes its name to the fact that it involves a series of dies (some would call them punches) which, through successive action, progressively form the product.
Stamping can necessitate low and high tonnage presses, using significant energy and large or small dies. The products are usually made from metal rolled up on heavy coils . The coiled metal is fed through the punch press and the part is stamped in progressive stages through the die that is bolted into the press. Progressive stamping will produce a significantly higher volume of parts at a much faster rate than hand transfer stamping.
At Evans Metal Stamping, Inc, we can assist with prototyping or run high volume jobs. Our metal presses can handle 30 to 1,000 tons at speeds up to 1,200 cycles per minute. When your project calls for high quality, precision stamping, Evans can handle your project no matter how big or time sensitive it may be.
Our capabilities in producing precision, high quality and high-volume runs are due to the state of the art machinery we use and our highly trained and experienced technicians. Our stamping machinery includes but is not limited to:
39 conventional presses from 30 to 1000 ton
27 high speed (1200 SPM) Bruderer presses from 40 to 125 ton
6 brake presses from 150 to 250 ton
3 shears
Hand transfer metal stamping
Hand transfer metal stamping is used to place individual pieces or parts of the design onto sheet metal, or stamp more heavy-duty single hit designs. Transfer die stamping is similar to progressive die stamping, but the part is free from the metal strip. Hand transfer metal stamping can also be used to add detail into already existing designs or produce larger components such as industrial generator pans which may require moving the workpiece from die to multiple dies.
Hand transfer metal stamping has been around for centuries and still used today by metal fabricators all over the world.
Evans has the capacity to produce high volumes of industrial type metal parts due to our decades of experience and machinery used to produce the parts.
Evans Metal Stamping is proudly made and produced in the USA
Evans is a one-stop shop, made in the USA, Preferred Provider of precision Tool & Die builds and progressive and hand transfer metal stamping products. We provide complete design and engineering processes, assembly, and packaging. We provide risk management solutions to the overseas supply chain breakdowns for OEMs by localizing supply chains with high quality, seamless logistics and hands on supply chain control.
Consumer landscapes are continuing to change while businesses are adjusting for the new normal. Manufacturers and industrial companies across the world are working hard to maintain and strengthen their supply chains. And companies who preferred to source internationally to save on costs, are seeking other cost-effective solutions.
The growing reality is that procurement professionals actually prefer to source locally.
Advantages of Using Local Suppliers
It’s clear that most buyers prefer to keep the supply chain as close to home as possible. Here’s why:
More Flexibility. Local suppliers are typically more reactive than suppliers who are farther away. They can deliver products quicker, and it is much easier for a supplier to coordinate a shipment across the neighborhood than around the world.
Greater Control. The further away you are from elements of your supply chain, the less control you have over them. Face-to-face visits will allow you to address any concerns and ensure all products meet your standards. There’s also less chance of things getting “lost in translation,” which often occurs when working with big teams of people, many of whom aren’t actually on the floor and touching your products.
Reduced Supply Chain Costs. North American businesses send and receive parts and products all over the continent and the expenses can add up as quickly as the miles. Even then, these pieces have to be stored in warehouses until they are shipped again to the next supplier or, if you’re lucky, the customer. Many of these costs can be reduced by localizing your supply chain. And, with less money being sunk into logistics, there will be less weighing down your bottom line.
More Revenue. Local sourcing doesn’t just help save money; it can also help you generate more of it. That’s because companies in your region may be impressed by your efforts to keep a tight and fast-paced supply chain, which can help you attract new customers.
Good for the Community. It stands to reason that if sourcing locally increases your bottom line, it would do the same for other suppliers and manufacturers in your area, which can be a big boon to your local economy and the people who live there.
Happy, well-paid employees are more likely to invest in local businesses. Additionally, respected and well-off businesses are in a position to contribute to communities through fundraising, volunteering, benefits, and sponsored activities.
It Helps the Environment. Localizing your supply chain represents a tremendous opportunity to help the environment. When you reduce shipping and storage, you also reduce emissions and energy usage. Sourcing locally not only contributes to green manufacturing, but ultimately helps you build consumer confidence. When consumers buy with confidence, the business benefits from increasing positive brand awareness and customer loyalty.
Ability to Launch Products Faster. Manufacturers who source locally benefit from working with companies in the same time zone, which leads to easier and speedy communication. You can resolve problems faster and launch products to meet consumer demands and spikes.
This article is the second installment of three articles about Toolmaker Apprenticeships. In the first article, we discussed the basic structure, time, requirements, and expected outcome from an individual’s journey through an apprenticeship. In this post, we’re taking a deeper look at how a Toolmaker Apprenticeship has changed since the 1970s.
What has changed?
To learn what has changed since Apprenticeship programs in the 1970s, we talked with Ronald Joseph and Robert Tiller, both long time journeymen in the Tool & Die trade. Though we spoke with each of them at separate times, they agreed on what has changed and what has stayed the same.
The training – When Ronald Joseph began his apprenticeship program, he went to school one day each week. Every Monday, he and his fellow apprentices would get two hours of class time and then three hours of shop time, learning the very basics of the machines and tools. Today, when the “kids” start right out of high school, it’s all OTJ – on the job training.
The tools – When Ronald Joseph started, they made their tools by hand using a file. “They sure don’t do that anymore!”, said Ronald.
The maintenance – One of the first thing that both Ronald and Robert Tiller learned when they started was how to sharpen – by hand using a pedestal grinder – the tool bit. Today’s tools are coated, and are designed to last longer.
The technology – Back in the 1970s and 1980s, when a customer would provide a drawing, a toolmaker had to make the decision, based on experience only, the best way to make a part. Today, the drawings are all electronic, and computer software can quickly determine the best methods and materials to use.
The machines – From CNC machines to Electric Wire Cutting Machines, the speed and accuracy of how things get built on the shop room floor are very different today than they were 30, 40, or 50 years ago.
What’s still the same?
Despite all the advances in technology that allow experienced toolmakers to do things better and faster, some things haven’t changed. Both Robert and Ronald believe these things won’t change.
Time – It still takes 4 to 5 years for an apprentice to learn all the tools, machines, safety precautions, materials, speeds & feeds before that apprentice can turn a block of steel into a die to make a part.
Safety first! – The machines are bigger, faster, more powerful, and therefore even more dangerous than they were 50 years ago. The first rule of being a Toolmaker Apprentice was safety first back then, and it’s safety first today.
Math – The fact that a toolmaker has to know trigonometry will baffle a lot of people, but the math never changes.
Much has changed, and much has stayed the same in a Toolmaker’s Apprentice world. Evan still retains more than a dozen Toolmakers and a constant flow of apprentices to learn and eventually lead the operation at Evans.
In the next and final article on Toolmaker Apprenticeships, we will meet each of the Apprentices employed at Evans Tool & Die.
In this three part series, we examine the age old approach to job training called the apprenticeship. Through interviews with Toolmakers, Master Toolmakers, current and recent apprentices, we discover what it means to be a Toolmaker Apprentice today and what has changed in the last generation of Toolmakers.
What is an Apprenticeship?
Wikipedia provides a solid definition of “apprenticeship”: An apprenticeship is a system of training a new generation of practitioners of a trade or profession with on-the-job training and often some accompanying study (classroom work and reading). Apprenticeship also enables practitioners to gain a license to practice in a regulated profession.
This definition fits well with what we learned from our conversations with six Evans employees. As we will discuss later in this article, the requirements of an Apprentice changed significantly since the 1970s. However, the approach remains the same. An apprenticeship program trains and educates someone with little or no experience into a professional at the trade.
What qualifications are required to become a Toolmaker Apprentice?
Generally speaking, there are no strict requirements for becoming a Toolmaker Apprentice. The candidate must be old enough to work full time job in their state. Aside from that, our conversations revealed some interesting answers.
Dick Ankeny, Shop Supervisor, started in High School. Ankeny’s Junior and Senior years in High School included machine shop classes that got him interested in machining and toolmaking. Ankeny offered the following as “what it takes” to be an apprentice, as opposed to any hard requirements:
Solid math skills – “trigonometry plays a big role in building tools and dies”
A desire to do this trade – “you’ll know within about 6 months if this is for you.”
A desire to create new things – “you start with a block of steel.”
How long is an apprenticeship to be a Toolmaker?
A new Toolmaker Apprentice should expect to be an Apprentice for about five years. It may be more or less than that, but with that expectation in mind, the Apprentice will be in the correct mindset to learn a great deal of skills and information in the early part of their career.
What does a Toolmaker Apprentice learn?
Starting on Day One of an Apprenticeship, the new Apprentice should expect to be in 100% learning mode. The Apprentice will learn most of the following items fairly quickly.
How to read a blueprint – the blueprint is the engineer’s drawing of what the part should look like.
How to square a block – The Apprentice must put a raw piece of steel in the mill, and get it square down to the thousandths of an inch according to the dimensions on the blueprint.
Drilling & Tapping – generally, how to use the most basic machines.
“Speeds & feeds” for lathe and mill – the speed at which the lathe and miller are operating and how fast one feeds in the steel into the lathe or mill. One can gain such knowledge through experience.
Leave .002” grind stock on the block – this requirement comes from the fact that, after the steel is heat treated, you still need some room on the block to make adjustments.
Heat buildup – When Start grinding, you must monitor heat buildup because the metal can warp if it gets too hot
How fast one catches on to each concept determines the Apprentice’s progress. The number one rule, lesson, and learning point for any Apprentice is safety first.
In the next installment of this series, we will compare and contrast the Apprenticeship experiences of a Toolmaker who completed his Apprenticeship 30 years ago and a Toolmaker who completed his Apprenticeship within the past 12 months.
In 2012, Evans Tool & Die Shop Supervisor Dick Ankeny was tasked with building a die for one specific part of a robotic surgical instrument. The specifications for the part required tolerances to be within .005”. The part had to be made from stainless steel, because the part itself would actually be inserted into surgical patients’ bodies, as a piece of a robotic surgical instrument.
The Challenge of a Surgical Instrument
The manufacturer of the surgical instrument had created technical drawings for the part; however, we still had to evaluate the specifications to determine if the part could be made according to the customer’s drawings. After a few iterations, the engineers were ready to move to the tool makers to begin creating the die.
Dick Ankeny, a Toolmaker who has worked for Evans for 28 years, said this of the project: “The hardest part was creating such a small cylindrical shape from a flat piece of stainless steel to such fine tolerances.”
Stainless Steel
According to Ankeny, stainless steel is harder to work with, not as forgiving on tooling, harder to stamp, form, etc. But the surgical instrument had to be stainless steel, because the part would actually be inserted into the bodies of surgical patients. Similar to the materials used food utensils in restaurants, stainless steel is one of the most commonly used metal alloys in the manufacture of surgical implements.
Austenitic 316 steel is a type of stainless steel used often, and is referred to as “surgical steel”. This is because it is a tough metal that is very resistant to corrosion. Stainless steel can withstand temperatures as high as 400°C, meaning it can be sterilized easily in an autoclave at 180°C. Stainless steel also has the benefit of being almost as tough and hard-wearing as carbon steel.
The Tool & Die Building Process
Once the drawings were finalized, we started building the tool. The process of making this die consisted of the following high-level steps:
The Engineers draw the technical design (commonly called “prints”) for the surgical instrument.
The Engineers determine which steel goes into each die, and then we order the steel for die. There are four different kinds of steel used in this particular die:
A2 – basic tool steel – easy to machine, treat, and grind
D2 – a step above A2, but a more durable steel
CPM10V – very hard steel, high tensile strength
M4 – also very hard steel, with high tensile strength
The Toolmaker squares the steel, puts any drilled holes or tapped holes needed, mills in the required dimensions, leaving grind stock.
What “leaving grind stock” means is that, for example, if the requirement for a certain size of block is 3” x 2” then we will actually mill the block to 3.020” x 2.020”.
Then we put drilled and tapped holes on the block, and heat treat the block to harden it.
These steps sound relatively clear and simple; however, “It took us more than nine months to build this die”, said Ankeny.
Progressive Stamping the Part
Ankeny described the progressive stamping process: “Each individual part starts with a single sheet of coiled stainless steel. We created 29 stamp progressions in the tool, starting with pilot holes. Each piece of flat steel moves forward at 20 strokes (hits) per minute, so we ended up producing just under 20 parts per minute once the metal stamp is rolling.” When creating this, it was important we used a high grade metal stamping lubricant.
Dick added, “This one was the second most challenging part I’ve ever built. We pulled that die out so many times I can’t remember!”
We built the die, ran many tests until the part met the final specifications and the customer was satisfied with the quality of the resulting part for their surgical instrument. Then our customer took the die and began manufacturing the part in their manufacturing facility.
“We can run the part or our customer can run the part. Either way is OK with us,” added Randall Stanfield, Engineering Project Director.
Testing & Measuring to Very High Tolerances
When the final part is rolled into its proper shape, we used a pin gauge to test it. One of the tests for quality was to drop a 3/16” pin straight through the cylinder. The specifications required tolerances of less than five thousandths of an inch (.005”), and the pin gauge had to move through the interior or the cylinder unimpeded. That’s just one test that the final part must pass. Some of the other challenging metrics included:
Springback. When you bend steel, it naturally resists, and bends back slightly towards its original shape. Because of the exacting specifications of this part, we had to design and build the tool to keep springback to a minimum.
Swedging. Swedging of the steel, to maintain the right thickness, was a challenge. We were required to change the steel to the required thickness (tolerances within .0005”) while having it maintain that exact thickness throughout the progressive stamping process while it’s running. Such requirements push the tooling to the limit of swedging the metal togethe
“Then we had to punch a tiny hole in it. Big challenge!” added Ankeny.
We used a Micrometer and pin gauges (3/16”) to measure the actual achieved tolerances and measurements. If the measurements don’t meet the specifications, we change radius of the tooling on the die. Then we complete another test run. There were close to 100 components in the die, including the top and bottom. In this case, “changing” the radius of the tooling on the die means adjustments of thousandths of inches.
Part of our core values
“Creating custom, difficult, challenging parts like this surgical instrument is a big part of our everyday operation,” adds Evans CEO Dee Barnes. “In the end, whether we produce the parts or our customer produces the parts, we know we’ve helped our customer get the end result they required.”
There is often a disconnect between design and engineering. To illustrate that point, consider an architect who designs amazing buildings that are more beautiful than our wildest dreams! But can those buildings actually be built? The same situation happens all the time in the manufacturing process. That is the challenge of design and engineering. At Evans, we don’t design your parts. We make them, and we help you make your parts better, stronger, and manufacture them more efficiently. Here is a case study of how we did exactly that for Textron Specialized Vehicles, the maker of golf carts and ATVs.
It Can’t Be Made
Back in 2015, Evans Design Engineer Randall Stanfield received a request for a quote to produce a specific part. The note that he added to the initial design drawing read, “We cannot make this product as designed.” And that design was version 8 of the design drawing. The part was a grade 50 stamped steel part for an ATV / Golf cart. This model was a brand new product for Textron, and this was their first entry (3 years ago) in the ATV market.
When Evans was invited to bid on several parts, we did not want to make this particular part simply because it could not be built as designed. So, we bid on it, but with a prohibitively high cost so as to make sure that we did not win the bid. Unfortunately, so did everyone else! So, they invited us to consult on the design and engineering of the part. It was during that consultative process that we worked together to figure out the best way to design the part so that it could actually be manufactured.
Design vs. Reality
When designing a part, you need to know whether or not it can actually be made. You can only know that by experience and repetition. Engineering school provides a future engineer a great foundation, but school cannot provide real world experience. Experience brings to life the large delta between design and reality, much like your house in the architect’s drawing: everything is perfectly square and level, but when you put it together, it’s not perfectly square or perfectly level. That’s reality. It is the same with a stamped metal part. So in the end, you may have to “change the print” (the design) to match the part that can actually be manufactured.
“Sometimes, we work with the manufacturer (customer) to modify the design to match the part we create, so the end product can be produced,” said Stanfield. “That’s exactly what we did for Textron.”
Eight Months & 19 Design Revisions
Design revision 8, the first design drawing we received, when tested on LogoPress, got 60% thin-out on the turns and bends in the steel. The steel could only withstand 20% thin-out. We redesigned the part, and got it down to 12% thin-out based on what the metal could do, rather than what the ATV required as designed. Eight months and 19 design and engineering revisions later, we produced version 27 of the design drawing. Evans is still producing that same part today.
Technology Makes Us Faster
Ten years ago, it would have taken us more than 3 years to get to revision 27. Using such advanced testing software shortened that time to just 8 months. The LogoPress software enables us to do detailed design calculations to determine very closely the actual tolerances of the stamped metal part before we actually physically build the part. Before the software, we built the part, then hit it (literally) to see where it would break. This particular part would have required dozens or hundreds of rebuilds.
Update the Product Design
Regardless of how long the process takes, there will always be changes to the design. Therefore, the final design drawings will need to be changed to match the final successful manufactured part. If the customer engineer does not change the final drawing to match the final part specs, in the future, someone’s going to say, “We can’t accept that! It doesn’t match the specification!”
How Can We Go Even Faster?
Design and engineering in manufacturing are, by their very nature, iterative processes. It takes time. Nobody is going to design the perfectly manufactured part in the first revision. How could we shorten the manufacturing design and engineering process? The best method for designing manufactured parts is to get the toolmaker involved early in the process. Let the manufacturing engineers talk to the design engineers. The engineers can discuss actual math, physics, tolerances, and final approval.
