With rising demand for cost reductions, attention is increasingly focusing on Fineblanking (FB). In the field of blanking thick plate to smooth even surfaces, there is a glowing trend toward use of work pieces of increasing hardness and thickness. Also, complex tooling of three dimensional profiles, to create products of high added value, is advancing into a broad array of sophisticated applications. Japan is a leader in the field of warm forging, in which difficult-to-machine work pieces are heated, and commercial viability is in sight. Already success have been achieved in producing products of 19 mm thickness.
Initially FB presses were imported from Switzerland and Germany, but now roughly 60 percent of FB presses sold in Japan are produced domestically. One important difference separates European presses from their Japanese cousins.
In Europe FB presses are normally made to standard specification as determined by local producers. In Japan FB presses are manufactured in direct response to the severe demands of the user, both technological and economic.
Recently, as pressed products have become increasingly large and complex, presses are used not only to perform precise blanking but also to machine shapes of highly sophisticated complexity, with cold forging being incorporated directly into the progressive processes. As a result, whereas just 5-6 years ago presses were mostly in the 250-400t class, today presses in the 650 t class and higher are coming to form the mainstream.
A number of developments have been pursued lately to achieve greater functional sophisticated and operational ease in compound tasks involving cold forging. These include auxiliary hydraulic and ram top-dead-center stop mechanisms of greater precision, CNC control of safety and maintenance mechanisms and failure diagnosis function, incorporation of automated energy-saving circuitry, QDC system, etc.
These advances are aimed toward achieving greater breadth and lower cost in production of FB products. Eccentric load measures have also been developed to cope with multiple work procedures. By securing parallelism between top and bottom tools, progressive work precision is enhanced.
Future developments will also focus on achieving shorter tool and material changing times in order to boost operating ratios and lower costs. With significant advances in automating the presses themselves, another consideration today is to automate production startup through automated setting of parameters enabled by automatic reading of product number and tool numbers.
A number of topics also await resolving in order to improve the work environment and enhance safety. These include improvement of product extrusion systems to deal with scattering and spillage of working oil, incorporation of automatic cleaning devices, noise reduction through parts removal of air-blowing, elimination of dangerous work by automating tool changing operation, etc. To save energy and resources, in view of the relatively poor material yield of FB compared with other work methods, greater advances must be pursued to achieve near net shape and reduce overall working costs.
