Stamping

Stamping is a process that involves shaping a metal part from a metal or aluminum sheet, or from a slit coil of rolled steel, commonly called a coil by stampers. This process allows for hot or cold metal stamping.

What is Stamping?

Stamping a sheet metal involves imposing a fold and deformation of the steel surface identical to the punch and die to give it volume by exceeding the elastic limit of the metal alloy material.

The stamping process involves working the metal “to deformations acceptable for the material, without going to” the point of sheet rupture. In practice, the “final thickness of the stamped sheet remains essentially equal to the” initial thickness of the metal.

Through the stamping process, we may be required, in the manufacture of progressive dies and stamping tools, to go through successive deformations of the sheet metal, using presses, to avoid metal ruptures, especially for deep drawing operations.

Design of Parts and Tools for Stamping

The cutting and stamping company KUCHLY, established in 1956, has acquired experience through numerous metal deformation cases and projects, allowing it to best respond to its clients’ issues. Our expertise allows us to advise our clients on various manufacturing choices, sheet metal cutting processes, shapes of future stamped parts, or types of tooling to implement.

A quality stamping process also involves choosing the metals to use based on the type of manufacturing and applications: mild or HSS (High Strength Steel), galvanized or not, brass, copper, aluminum, and food-grade or non-food-grade stainless steel.

Our Custom Stamping Techniques

Stamping consists of a sheet metal deformation operation that we perform with presses, punches, and form tools made by us. We use various stamping techniques, such as “single-action stamping or”double-action stamping, which has the particularity of using a blank holder to stamp the metal in question.

In addition to aluminum, we also implement these stamping techniques on metal, whether galvanized or not, and particularly on fastening parts such as metal clamps, tightening clips, or reinforced junction pieces for metal structures.

Finally, our experience in deep drawing of materials allows us to meet specific needs of medical or food industries, such as stainless steel door strikes.

We have developed custom stamping processes to meet different goals:

Reinforce a metal part on its surface length to minimize material usage and therefore manufacturing cost.
Form housings in the sheet metal to accommodate another metal element during assembly.
Allow for specific uses such as reinforcing an angle, a recess, an offset plane, or a volumetric shape without resorting to assembly or welding.

The applications in the field of stamping are therefore endless.

A Complete Manufacturing Process, from Stamping to Coining

Beyond the simple or double stamping process, we have also developed real expertise in techniques related to forming and working metal parts. These particular processes allow us, in certain areas, to increase metal deformation by coining or metal hardness by work hardening, performing combinations of techniques that allow us to create an M12 thread in a sheet metal only 1.5mm (15/10ths of a millimeter) thick.

KUCHLY has its own design office to offer its clients custom material stamping solutions, which, after numerous preliminary tests in terms of metal deformation, use of different presses, creation of punches or dies, has allowed us to find the successive operations, and therefore the necessary steps, for the realization of a progressive die for M12 threading by upsetting or deformation of the metal material.

Stamping and Cold Forming of Metals

All these stamping techniques and processes are performed by cold deformation of metal and material, mainly by presses, meaning without changing the molecular structure of the metal, on a material that may or may not be coated with galvanization or lacquer.

The correlation between the implemented deformation solution and the choice of materials is crucial in order to “obtain the correct range of sheet metal deformation, especially for bending and stamping operations (range of” elasticity + plasticity on the graph below in green), in order to avoid cracks (fissures) or loss of mechanical strength in the metal.

The deformation of metals occurs in the zone of “elasticity and plasticity. It is therefore necessary to exceed the” elasticity zone without reaching the next zone (elasticity + plasticity + damage), and even less so the breaking point. For this reason, the characteristics of metals suitable for cold deformation are important.

As part of our stamping process, for the manufacturing of parts or tools with different radii and diameters necessary for your activity, we select metals based on various parameters such as yield strength Re, tensile strength Rm, or elongation A%.

This advisory phase is very important and is part of the expertise that KUCHLY company brings to its customers.

Complementary techniques can be implemented successively in different tools or simultaneously in progressive die tools of the Parisian type.