Fabricating metals involve many processes. With each process, you can achieve a wide range of part designs.
In this guide, we are going to explore some common metals forming processes. Besides, you will also learn how to choose a metal fabrication technique, metals you can fabricate and examples of parts, among other vital aspects.
So, before starting your next material forming process, read this guide.
What is Metal Forming?
Metal forming is a process that shapes metal components using a variety of techniques like bending, stretching, or compression. This process facilitates the manufacturing of various products that vary from brackets to car parts.
It allows you to manipulate the workpiece using controlled force to change its shape without increasing or reducing its mass. Therefore, it produces accurate and strong outcomes.
How to Choose Metal Forming Technique
· Material Type
When deciding which method of metal forming to use, the first factor you take into consideration is the type of material. Every metal has its characteristics, such as ductility and strength, which determine how the metal will undergo forming.
For instance, if you are dealing with aluminum, you might opt for bending or stamping, while if you are working with steel, forging is recommended.
This is because it is only where the technique matches the material that the right results are achieved, and the metal should not be damaged in this process.
· Product Design
When choosing the right metal-forming technique, you ought to evaluate your product design. Parts with extensive folds or with additional details on their surfaces might need deep drawing or hydroforming to shape accurately.
Less complicated designs might only require bending or even rolling. That is why, by matching the technique to the need of design, you arrive at the required shape and functionality without extra steps or expense.
· Production Volume
When it comes to selecting any of these metal-forming techniques, the production volume is an essential factor to consider. But for mass production, stamping or roll forming may be used because they are cheap methods when it is done on a large scale.
For smaller batches or when they need to produce some individual parts, it is easier to use hand forging or bending.
This way you can match the technique you are using to your production requirements, thereby avoiding waste and enjoying cheaper prices.
· Tooling Costs
Before choosing a metal-forming technique, you are advised to assess the tooling costs. Some methods, such as stamping, utilize dies and molds that are rather costly, hence more applicable in mass production.
It should also be noted that bending or manual forming may be more cost-effective if you are dealing with a low budget or producing relatively few pieces.
For example, you can take a close look at CNC milling costs.
· Tolerance Requirements
Tolerance requirements for your project must be taken into account when accuracy is essential. Accurate components may be produced with tight tolerances thanks to processes like CNC bending and precision stamping.
Simpler techniques like hand bending could be used in cases where great precision is not as important. You may verify that your finished product fulfills quality requirements without needless complication by matching the technique to your tolerance demands.
Common Metal Forming Examples
· Compressive Forming Techniques
Rolling Metal
When you roll metal, you take the metal through some rollers so as to decrease its thickness into a flat sheet. This compressive forming technique is best suited for flat and stiff parts like steel plates. The thickness is controlled by roller pressure; it is adaptable to be used in construction, automobiles, and manufacturing fields.
Rolling is ideal for producing quantity while maintaining uniform thickness and strength, making it a cheaper and more effective technique for manufacturing a variety of metal products.
Metal Extrusion
Metal extrusion means you push metal through a die to produce long cylindrical elements, for example, rods or tubes. This compressive forming technique makes it possible for you to create cross-sectional shapes that are extremely sophisticated.
You control the shape by utilizing different die designs, making it perfect for producing metallic parts for construction, aerospace, and automotive sectors. Extrusion offers the feasibility of creating complex designs without unnecessary material, thereby providing close tolerances to the final products.
Die Forming
Die forming is a process where metals are shaped into certain forms by squeezing them in a mold or die. This type of compressive technique proves useful when it comes to manufacturing small parts of intricate shapes, for instance in car fenders or fridges. You opt for die-forming when you want intricate shapes that are accurate to the last detail, and many of them are required.
The process guarantees high levels of productivity in that it minimizes material consumption while delivering uniform quality. Making your process suitable for industries that require standardized metal products.
Forging Metal
Forging is a process that involves bending metal using pressure and/or a hammer, making the metal tougher and more resistant. This compressive technique is suitable particularly for manufacturing parts such as gears, bolts, tools, and many more.
You get strong parts capable of handling significant loads of pressure through the control of pressure and temperature. Forging is often applied in the aerospace, automotive, and construction industries where strength and durability requirements are critical.
Indenting
You use indenting to produce a design or impression on metals either by the force of pressure or impact. This type of forming process helps one to incorporate some texture or such features on a product without changing the shape of the product. It can also be used for branding, developing a functional and formative aspect, as well as for the beauty of it.
This way, you guarantee that the marks made are accurate and will stay that way, adding value to the look or usability of the product. Most industries use indenting, and it is a technique that applies in many sectors, such as jewelry and many more.
· Tensile forming processes
Stretching Metals
Stretching is a process where tensile force is applied to the material to make it thinner and longer than it was in its original state. The best application of this technique is to create curved shapes with metal sheets often used in aerospace and automobile manufacturing. Stretching is a process of controlling the shape of the metal.
The best thing about it is that the strength of your metal is not affected in the process. Stretching makes it easier to achieve the intricate curves since the technique guarantees strength and accuracy of the finished piece.
Expanding Metals
In expanding metals, they make the metal sheet thinner by stretching or by making holes all around the sheet. It enables you to expand the surface area of the metal with limited material added, which makes it ideal for making lightweight, durable parts.
It is widely used in construction, water treatment systems, and even in architectural designs.
Thus, when you increase metals, you are improving the means of flow, lightness, and power, all applied for functionality and appearance across numerous uses.
Recessing
To recess, you apply tensile force to yielding metal sheets to form depressions or sunken areas in the sheet. This process is usually utilized to create the grooves or cavities that will facilitate fastening or enhance the structural shape of a part.
Recessing is utilized in applications such as automotive and electronic manufacturing because of the need to shape particular parts for assembly.
The depth and shape of the requisite form are regulated, and the “strength” of the metal is retained, allowing for much use in both decorative and functional objects.
· Combining Compressive Forming and Tensile Forming
Metal Spinning
In metal spinning, you integrate both compressive and tensile forming to bend a metal disc over the rotating mandrel. It is most suitable when building parts of cylindrical shape, such as cones or bowls, among others.
When pressure and speed are adjusted, cutting to finer detail is obtained without applying thinness to the material.
Metal spinning is utilized in the aerospace, automobile, and cookware industries as it gives the required symmetrical and hard shapes.
Flange Forming
In flange forming, you align a raised edge or rim with a metal part through the application of compression in tensile force. This process is widely applied to strengthen the part and enable easy joining in products such as pipes or tanks. You get to decide how high the flange is and at what angle it should be for the best fit to be achieved. It is rather important for industries that require more significant connection points, like plumbing or heating and ventilation.
Deep Drawing
Deep drawing also involves drawing a flat metal sheet into a deep, hollow form by using compressive as well as tensile forces. This process is often employed in the production of artifacts such as cans, pots, or other automobile parts.
In this way, you guarantee identical thickness and strength as well as nonmongoloid idiographic forming force.
Other Metal Forming Process
Bending Techniques
When it comes to bending process, you can adopt many techniques:
- Air Bending: It allows you to pull punch off the material slightly and apply force in the direction needed to create the required angle of bending metal.
- Bottoming: While bottoming, the metal is squeezed thoroughly into the die, thus providing precise angles and minimal springback.
- Coining: Heated coining involves you forcing the metal down into the die just as you wish to make permanent bends.
- Roll Bending: This method is used to make large radius bends, which are best suited for making curved forms.
- Wipe Bending: You bend the metal by placing the side you wish to bend against the fixed edge, which guarantees fast and same results for small bending tasks.
Shearing
Shearing is a process where two blades cut straight lines through the metal sheets without necessarily leaving a sharp edge. The top blade is reciprocating in the downward direction, and the lower one is fixed.
This process is best suited for cutting large sheets into smaller parts, whereby the process does not involve the generation of chips or heat. You notice that shearing is widely employed in manufacturing, especially where acute severance is desirable for additional metal processing.
Punching
When punching, you are making holes in the metal where the punch goes through the metal into a die. You can set the size and shape of the hole’s punch, meaning you can create accurately sized holes for bolts, fasteners, or design aspects.
This process is rapid and suitable for mass production of parts with standard hole sizes in metalworking sectors.
Casting
In casting, you put molten metal in a mold, and when the metal cools, its shape will imitate the mold. This technique is used when forming complex forms and large-figure metal work, as, for example, in car engines or giant sculptures.
It is used when one desires the part to have a fine, detailed surface and at the same time possess rigidity or strength.
Ironing
Ironing is a process where a metal is shaped by using a punch and die to make it thinner yet stronger than its previous shape. You use ironing in such areas as can manufacturing, where thinning to a desired thickness is very important. It makes the part surface uniform and free from streaks while making the part stronger and minimizing material usage.
Welding Techniques
- Arc Welding: Arc welding involves the use of an electric arc to melt the two metals at the joining point, where they then coalesce to form a solid.
- MIG Welding: MIG welding involves using a solid wire electrode that is continuously fed to make strong and precise welds.
- TIG Welding: You use a tungsten electrode for finer, precisely manufactured welds, suitable for thin plates.
- Spot Welding: Spot welding is the process in which you simply use pressure and heat to combine two metal sheets, often used heavily in car construction.
- Flux-Cored Welding: Like MIG but with a hollow wire infused with flux, you use this for welding in severely windy conditions.
Cutting Techniques
- Laser Cutting: You use a focused laser beam to cut metals, which is fast and appropriate for intricate designs on the material.
- Plasma Cutting: A high-velocity jet of ionized gas (plasma) is used and is more suitable for conductive material, such as cutting through thick metal.
- Waterjet Cutting: It is a mechanical method that employs a high-pressure stream of water with abrasives to cut through metals without producing heat.
- Oxy-Fuel Cutting: When you mix oxygen with fuel gases, you get a flame that has enough heat to melt steel and sever it with ease.
Stamping
In stamping, a die is used to imprint or shape metal by pressing or punching it into a certain form. You employ stamping in the production of huge quantities of parts, such as car parts, appliances, or coins. It is quick and accurate and can generate large numbers of uniform, complex shapes easily with little material waste.
Best Metals for Forming Operations
Aluminum
Aluminum is especially suitable for forming operations due to its light weight, relative malleability, and resistance to corrosion.
It can be easily formed using various techniques such as bending, stamping, and extrusion and is mostly used in the automotive, aerospace, and packaging industries. This characteristic of aluminum means that it can be formed without breaking, thereby increasing efficiency in relation to cost.
Steel
Steel is frequently utilized in forming operations due to its high strength and durability, as well as its relatively low cost. You can make it using rolling, forging, and stamping techniques and manufacture tough constructional and automotive & machinery spare parts.
Being able to be alloyed also gives it a level of tolerance in the strive to meet certain performances.
Copper
Copper is one of the most desirable metals to use when a substance that is a good conductor of electricity and is also quite workable is required. It can be easily formed by bending, stretching, or drawing, which makes it applicable in electrical parts and pipes. Copper is relatively soft to be formed into various shapes without jeopardizing its strength.
Brass
Brass is an alloy of copper that is strengthened by the addition of zinc, which can also fairly easily be formed. You select it for forming processes such as stamping and deep drawing when manufacturing garnishes, fittings, or musical instruments.
It can be used in different industries and businesses since it has good corrosion properties and is easy to work with.
Titanium
Titanium is well suitable for forming events in aerospace, medical, and chemical industries due to its formability, strength-to-weight ratio, and its corrosion facilities. You can form it through forging, stamping, or extrusion intervening for parts that are light weight to take tough working conditions.
Examples of Formed Metal Parts
Automotive Panels
You frequently employ metal forming to produce car doors, hoods, and fenders. Processes such as stamping and deep drawing assist you in forming these parts in the right manner for durability and safety.
Warped automotive panels provide the power and low weight that must be achieved to achieve better fuel economy and protection in car accidents.
Pipes and Tubes
Through extrusion or rolling processes, you can form metal pipes and tubes that can cater for the plumbing needs, the gas, and other industrial requirements. These parts are used to transport fluids or gases and need to be reliable and either corrosion-resistant or pressure vessels.
Metal Cans
When you want to make metal cans, deep drawing is often employed to convert a flat metal sheet into the cylindrical shape. These cans are mostly used in the food industry and the beverage sector, as well as the chemical industry, for safe packaging since they are lightweight.
Aircraft Components
For instance, in the aerospace business, metal forming is crucial to manufacturing light but robust parts such as wings, engines, and fuselage components. The major materials used in the production of Ford are titanium and aluminum. And these are mainly formed either through forging or stamping to provide strength and light weight to improve fuel efficiency.
Kitchenware
Stamping and rolling forming processes are used to produce different kitchen utensils, pots, and pans with the help of metal materials. These items are usually manufactured from stainless steel or aluminum because they are durable, heat-resistant, and easy to clean, which is ideal for daily cooking.
FAQs
What is Bulk Metal Forming?
Bulk metal forming forms large metal volumes into parts through techniques such as forging, extrusion, and rolling.
How do Hot-working and Cold-working Metals compare?
Hot working is done at high temperatures as this makes shaping easier, while cold working is done at room temperature, which makes the metal stronger by strain hardening.
What are the Safety considerations in the Metal-forming Process?
To eliminate risks such as burns, cuts, and machine injuries, it is necessary to wear appropriate personal protective equipment, to maintain the tools and equipment, to protect the pinch points, and to provide sufficient ventilation.
Conclusion
Metals forming processes enable a designer to select a proper type of forming to be used on a particular project to allow accuracy, increased speed, and avoiding dangerous occurrences. When using these methods, one is in a position to manufacture quality parts as well as hard-wearing metals.
