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Stamping Dies

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What are Stamping Dies?

There are many types of stamping dies that can be made, which one to use depends on a few bits of information, such as quantity needed, material to be used, flatness required, complexity of part, size of the part, flat, bent, or drawn part.

Single hit hand fed die would be used for smaller production runs where a blank is manually loaded in the tool by the operator, the press is cycled, and the part is removed. This kind of tooling has the lowest cost of tooling but a higher piece price due to the slower production rate. You can pierce, trim, draw, form, bend, lance, offset, joggle, extrude, and dimple in a single hit hand fed tool.

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Offset Dies

Piercing Dies

Forming Dies

Trimming Dies

Compound Dies

Lancing Dies

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Drawing Dies

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Cutoff die, this type of tooling uses material in either strip or coil form. The material is feed into the die holes and shapes are punched into the strip, the strip is indexed forward and cut off from the rest of the material. This type of tooling works well for medium quantities with simple geometries and bends.

Compound dies are used when the flatness and or dimensional tolerance are critical. Compound dies are more costly to build and run and can use coil, strip or individual blanks for material.

Draw dies are used to form cups or shells. Drawing is a metal forming process in which a product is made by controlling sheet metal flow into a cavity and over a punch. The process of deep drawing means that the part must be taller than its minimum width. The material can be strips, pre-cut blanks or coil depending on the quantity of parts needed.

Progressive dies are of the most common, fastest methods available for producing piece parts. Progressive dies tie the parts together by a portion of the original coil, which is called a strip carrier. The parts exit the die complete after each stroke of the press and can run unattended with the proper sensors. Progressive dies are the most cost effective way to produce parts but the tooling tends to be more costly.

Progressive Tooling, Piercing Dies, Trimming Dies, Lancing Dies, Drawing Dies, Offset Dies, Forming Dies, Compound Dies, Metal Stamping

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What is a Class A Die?

By: Jim Szumera - MACORPublished on: 08/16/2016

What is a Class A DIE?

I have an idea what a class a die should be. It has never been formally defined. It is a personal perception based on one’s own background and experience in the Tool and Die Industry. It may mean one thing to a manufacturing engineer and something totally different to a tool and die maker. One of our clients engaged us to help them bring a new product to market. The product utilized 28 different stampings. Part of our responsibility was to source the tooling and production in the United States. I put together a spreadsheet and sent out the bid packages. The production costs were relatively competitive. I was totally amazed at the variations in the tooling costs. They were all over the map. I had received prices ranging from $45,000 to $325,000 for the same tool. This issue was prevalent across all 28 tools. Everyone quoted a class A tool. I don’t think anyone quoted a class B die. What actually happened? All the suppliers chosen were the experts in the field. It became a question of perception and personal preference of what constitutes a class A die. The pricing was not acceptable, so I decided to create a tooling specification to define a class A die, or better yet, define our needs. The bid packages were sent out again along with the tooling specification. To no one’s amazement, the return bids were all competitive within 10%. This allowed me to now focus on the logistics, of delivery, terms and other valuables.

In creating a tooling standard or specification, it is important to focus on several factors. The quantity requirement or product life cycle is first on my list. The next critical criteria are rates of production, product tolerance, tooling support, maintenance, safety and design. It is a good practice to keep the tooling standard user friendly and only address those attributes which are required to meets product specification.

Let’s look at an example. Assuming we have a product that must ship large quantities per month and the life cycle is 5 years. Knowing also the tolerances, I can now define the tooling parameters. The die design itself can stipulate all the attributes, or it can be expressed in a separate document.

The design attributes can include assembly views, material lists, detailed drawings, general set up instructions, and possibly a maintenance work instruction. The design can be either separable (one detail per drawing with its own identifier for control and reorder) or inseparable (many details per sheet utilizing one tool number). You can specify that all drawing requirements comply with the latest DOD STD or ANSI Y14.5 etc.

Let’s now look at some tooling attributes. The die shoe or die set can be specified 2 or 4 post with ball cages or pins. You can also specify thickness, shut height, and mounting bolt pattern. Depending upon part tolerance the die shoe flatness can be specified (.0005 per linear foot). Avoid using such terms as “commercial” or “precision” unless accompanied by a tolerance. The type of steel can also be specified. A hot rolled crs, Aluminum or 4140 as an example.

The type of materials for the tooling components should also be specified. The method of fastening the components to the shoe can also be specified. Each component should be permanently identified with tool number and rev level and material. You may also want to specify utilizing the WEDM process for die buttons, punches, strippers and inserts. Any components with large cut outs