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Duane Kari, Sales Manager, Top Tool
Our world is getting smaller as design engineers create increasingly challenging, more complex parts that require ever-tighter tolerances. As component complexity increases, precision micro stamping excels, it shouldn't be a complete mystery micro stamping offers unique manufacturing benefits including outstanding repeatability and low cost per piece.
Micro Stamping is not a new invention, it’s a new way of thinking, though metal stamping has been around for a century or more, Today's metal stamping is futuristic by comparison. Imagine computer designed components made from space age materials, processed to micron level accuracy. Now that you’re on the mind set of precision, let’s think it one step further by scaling it down to the micron level. Whoa, what just happened? What’s a micron? This is where micro stamping is today, perpetually innovative cutting and shaping metal with accuracy similar to peering into a microscope and measuring the width of a red blood cell.
This challenges conventional wisdom of what’s stampable and what’s still dreamable. I like to think that it’s a convergence of sound engineering practice combined with innovative open thought process , let’s make something, how are we going to process all of the routine manufacturing steps , and yet hold a strict discipline of limiting variation during the process. Stamping dies do just that, it’s an inherently lean and fixed process outcome, raw material in one side of the tool, completed parts cycle out the other side.
I still find amazement with the possibilities of today’s micro stamping, engineers and designer’s co creating the part to be made. It’s after the initial discussion people start to realize stamping is the way to mitigate risk and also keep future cost in check during the entire life cycle of the project.
The ability to cut, shape and process fine detail from materials that were only invented in the last few years, such as ingestible and proprietary clad formulations, clearly puts micro stamping on the cutting edge of manufacturing technology. Add scale-able capacity to manufacture a part with complex features and sophisticated geometries at production press speeds reaching several hundred up to thousands parts per minute — not to mention combine a dozen operations in an inherently lean process and now you’re getting a true picture of what precision micro stamping can offer.
While all of this sophistication might seem to reduce the likelihood that precision metal stamping can replace traditional machining, it’s possible those elements point directly at stamping to streamline, reduce risk, simplify, reduce cost and enable the highest possible quality. At a minimum, it’s worth keeping an open mind and learning more about micro stamping.
Focus on the lettering on a coin from your pocket, does this make sense in volume — as a machined part? Not really. High-end micro stamping achieves fine detail in scale every day. The difference-maker in this scenario could be the stamping die. The automated, precise feeding of material through as many as 20 different inline, simultaneous operations to punch, coin, bend, draw, shape, and even form — with ultra-high production cycle times.
These processes occur without the exposure to variation and slower throughput related to manual set-ups, loading fixtures, or transferring parts between CNC operations. As a result, it’s not uncommon for a €5 machined part to price at less than €.25 (plus tooling investment) as a stamped micro component. And at that level of cost reduction, producing 1,000 to 1 million parts quickly recoups tooling costs.
The potential in a progressive die solution is particularly high when a production run reaches 20,000 or more parts. Driving cost down to €.25 or less on volume, can buy a lot of highly precise, long-life and quality-ensuring tooling. The efficiency in precision metal stamping accumulates from several sources. Material usage in stamping, for example, can approach 100 percent. And while the end mill or cutting tools for a CNC center might be good for 500 parts before tolerances start to waiver and dimensional requirements seek verification, a progressive die stays in line for 50,000 parts or more.
Ongoing miniaturization is driving new challenges in making precise components — particularly medical device parts made from precious metal, such as platinum electrodes and markers that are critical to implantable, increasingly-smaller pacemakers and pain management devices that depend on the repeatable, cost-efficient quality that’s inherently unique to micro stamping. With respect to process, stamping is near net shape - in most cases and to begin with- raw stock and the completed part share the same thickness. To gain critical design features on the print, raw material simply routes progressively through the stamping die, flowing and stretching precise amounts of raw material — exactly matching the die shape of the part.
Efficient material use is the key advantage when manufacturing very small parts from very expensive precious metals – particularly the gold and platinum specified in medical and electronic applications. Stamping is a lower-cost process (per piece part) than machining because high-precision, in-die shaping operations such as cutting and forming generate significantly less scrap than removing material by milling or grinding. In fact, material use during stamping can approach 100 percent, and at precious metal prices well over €39 per gram, this cost avoidance is significant.
One critical enabler is in-die sensing tied into electronic press controls. This is the same microprocessor-based sensing and control technology that reports on, monitors, manages and automates everything from the fuel-and-oxygen mixture in a car engine, to several thousand events occurring on a rocket en route to the International Space Station.
Sensing and control technology are ubiquitous, of course. In the context of metal stamping, it’s about the evolution from shutting down because of part rejection or a misfeed, to measuring 0.1 mm features and relaying the data to trigger a tooling adjustment — all on the fly without stopping production. And before the press runs any out-of-tolerance parts, or permits even a single die-cracking mis-hit, inline measurement cameras take the process to another level by capturing inspection data in real time.
The mistake-proofing and die-protecting intelligence embedded in a smart tool is all-important in complex precision micro stamping. It’s also the reason premium-engineered, top-performing tooling is not the lowest-cost tooling. Keep in mind it’s impossible to be both premium and low-cost — it’s one or the other.
A high-end progressive die or smart tool powered by leading edge sensing and control, is an intricately designed and engineered work of precision mechanical art. This is exactly what’s required to produce certain complex components, at a fraction of the cost associated with traditional machining.
Highly efficient, today’s precision metal stamping is a smart micro manufacturing solution that combines quality, speed and price – even in quick-turn prototyping or low- to mid-volume applications-stamping dies have another advantage over other manufacturing methods, speed, nothing beats stamping for precise but accurate horsepower. Hundreds if not thousands of parts per minute, this equals parts per euro over the common euro per part.
Quality has a price, it cost money not to consider stamping for your next components. So if you haven’t considered precision micro stamping as a viable option to make your next product, it’s time to see the world take a closer, smarter look.
Top Tool
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