Metal Forming

Topic includes
Hot &Cold working
Forging
Extrusion
Rolling
Drawing

1) COLD WORKING
Plastic deformation which is carried out in a temperature region and
over a time interval such that the strain hardening is not relieved is
called cold working.

Some Cold Working Processes:

Cold rolling
Cold forging
Cold extrusion
Bending
Drawing
Shearing

Reason for Cold Working:

Provides better surface finish and dimensional precision.

The advantages of cold working are

A better surface finish may be achieved

Dimensional accuracy can be excellent because the work

is not hot so it doesn't shrink on cooling; also the low
temperatures mean the tools such as dies and rollers
can last a long time without wearing out.

Usually there is no problem with oxidative effects such

as scale formation. In fact, cold rolling (for example) can
make such scale come off the surface of a previously
hot-worked object.

Controlled amounts of cold work may be introduced.

Effect of cold working on tensile strength, hardness, ductility and

grain size. (The curve below ductility represents the change in
grain size)

As with hot working, the grain structure of the material

is made to follow the deformation direction, which can
be good for the strength of the final product.

Strength and hardness are increased, although at the

expense of ductility.

OH & S problems related to working near hot metal are

eliminated.

There is a limit to how much cold work can be done on

a given piece of metal. See the discussion above about
accumulation of damage in the form of piled up
dislocations.

Higher forces are required to produce a given

deformation, which means we need heavily built,
strong forming machines .

HOT WORKING

Hot working refers to the process where metals are defromed above
their recrystallizaton tempereture and strain hardening does not
occur.Hot working performed at elevated tempreature.However is hot
working at room temperature because of its low melting temperature.

Hot ingots

Some Hot Working Processes:

Rolling
Forging
Extrusion
Hot drawing
Pipe welding
Piercing
Reason for Hot Working:
At elevated temperatures, metals weaken and become more ductile.

The most important continuous hot working processes

The advantages of hot working are

Lower working forces to produce a given shape, which means

the machines involved don't have to be as strong, which means
they can be built more cheaply;

The possibility of producing a very dramatic shape change in a

single working step, without causing large amounts of internal
stress, cracks or cold working;

Sometimes hot working can be combined with a casting process

so that metal is cast and then immediately hot worked. This
saves money because we don't have to pay for the energy to
reheat the metal.

Hot working tends to break up large crystals in the metal and

can produce a favourable alignment of elongated crystals

Hot working can remove some kinds of defects that occur in

cast metals. It can close gas pockets (bubbles) or voids in a cast
billet; and it may also break up non-metallic slag which can
sometimes get caught in the melt (inclusions).

The main problems,

If the recrystallisation temperature of the worked metal is high

e.g. if we are talking about steel, specialised methods are
needed to protect the machines that work the metal. The
working processes are also dangerous to human operators
and very unpleasant to work near.

The surface finish of hot worked steel tends to be pretty crude

because ;
the dies or rollers wear quite rapidly
there is a lot of dimensional change as the worked object
cools
there is the constant annoying problem of scale formation
on the surface of the hot steel.

Forging
Forging is manufacturing process where metal
is pressed, pounded or squeezed under great
pressure into high strength parts known as
forgings. The process is normally (but not
always) performed hot by preheating the metal
to a desired temperature before it is worked. It is
important to note that the forging process is
entirely different from the casting (or foundry)
process, as metal used to make forged parts is
never melted and poured (as in the casting
process).
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Types of Forging

Hand forging :- Hand forging is emplayed only to

shape a small number of light forgings chiefly in repair
shops.
Hammer forgings :- Usually used for small item
forging.
Press forging :- Usually used for heavy item forging.
Machine forging :- For medium sized and large
articles requiring very heavy blows.
Drop forging :- For mass production of identical
parts.

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Most open die forgings are produced on flat dies.

Round swaging dies and V dies also are used in
pairs or with a flat die. Operations performed on
open die presses include:
Drawing out or reducing the cross-section of an
ingot or billet to lengthen it.
Upsetting or reducing the length of an ingot or billet
to a larger diameter.
Upsetting, drawing out, and piercing--processes
sometimes combined with forging over a mandrel
for forging rough-contoured rings.

Forged Products
In automotive applications, forged components
are commonly found at points of shock and
stress. Forged automobile components include
connecting rods, crankshafts, wheel spindles,
axle beams, pistons, gears, and steering arms.
Forgings are also used in helicopters, pistonengine planes, commercial jets, and supersonic
military aircraft. Many aircraft are "designed
around" forgings and contain more than 450
structural forgings, including hundreds of forged
engine parts.
"Forged" is the mark of quality in hand tools and
hardware. Pliers, hammers, sledgers, wrenches,
garden implements, and surgical tools are
almost always produced through forging.
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Rolling
Aluminium is first passed through a hot rolling mill and then transferred to a cold rolling mill.

Hot rolling mils:

Prior to rolling the aluminium is in the form of an ingot which can be up to 600mm
thick. This ingot is then heated to around 500C and passed several times
through the hot rolling mill. This gradually reduces the thickness of the metal to
around 6mm.

This thinner aluminium is then coiled and transported to the cold rolling mill for
further processing.

Cold rolling mils:

There are various types of cold rolling mill, and they produce various types of rolled
product, with thicknesses as low as 0.05mm. In general the type of product
depends on the alloy used, the rolling deformation and thermal treatment used in
the process as well as careful adjustments to the mechanics and chemistry of
the process. Rolling mills are controlled by very precise mechanisms and
measuring systems.

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Rolling??
Rolling is a fabricating process in which the metal, plastic,
paper, glass, etc. is passed through a pair (or pairs) of rolls.
There are two types of rolling process, flat and profile rolling.
In flat rolling the final shape of the product is either classed
as sheet (typically thickness less than 3 mm, also called
"strip") or plate (typically thickness more than 3 mm).
In profile rolling, the final product may be a round rod or other
shaped bar such as a structural section (beam, channel, joist
etc). Rolling is also classified according to the temperature of
the metal rolled. If the temperature of the metal is above its
recrystallization temperature then the process is termed as
hot rolling, If the temperature of metal is below its
recrystallization temperature the process is termed as cold
rolling.

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WHAT is DRAWING?
Drawing is an operation in which the cross-section of solid
rod, wire or tubing is reduced or changed in shape by pulling
it through a die.
The principle of this procedure consist of reducing the
thickness of a pointed ,tapered wire by drawing it through a
conical opening in a tool made of a hard material.The wire
will take shape of the hole.

Drawing improves strength and hardness when these properties

are to be developed by cold work and not by subsequent heat
treatment
Where is it used?
This process is widely used for the production of thicker walled
seamless tubes and cylinders therefore; shafts, spindles, and small
pistons and as the raw material for fasteners such as rivets, bolts,
screws.

DRAWING TOOLS

The most important tool in the drawing process is without

doubt the drawplate.This consist of a plate of high grade steel
into which similar shaped holes have been placed whose size
in evenly reduced from one hole to another.

The most common drawplate have round holes and are used
to reduce the size of round wire.

Drawing wire with the draw tongs

drawbench

How such a drawplate hole is made

Deep Drawing
Deep drawing and pressing involve a combination of bending and
stretching.The simplest example of this process involves the
fabrication of a cup from a circular sheet blank.
For deep drawing operations the quality of strip required should be
non-directional and of the correct combination of hardness and grain
size for the tooling .

Blanking

Blanking is cutting up a large sheet of stock into smaller pieces

suitable for the next operation in stamping, such as drawing and
forming. Often this is combined with piercing.
Blanking can be as simple as a cookie cutter type die to produce
prototype parts, or high speed dies that run at 1000+ strokes per
minute, running coil stock which has been slit to a specified width.
For production parts, the final configuration of the drawn or
formed shape needs to be established before the blank die can be
built-since the blank size and the slit width size needs to be
established precisely.

Piercing is the operation of cutting internal features

(holes or slots) in stock. Piercing can also be combined
with other operations such as lance and form (to make
a small feature such as tab), pierce and extrude (to
make an extruded hole). All these operations can be
combined with blanking.
Piercing of all the holes is best done together to ensure
good hole-to-hole tolerance and part repeatability.
However if the material distorts, the method described
below can be done.
When there are large numbers of holes, in a tight pitch,
there could be distortions, due to the high amount of
tension on the upper surface due to stretching and
compression on the bottom surface. This causes the
material not to lay flat. This can be avoided/lessened by
staggering the piercing of the holes. Holes are punched
in a staggered pattern; then the other holes are
punched in the alternate staggered pattern.

A material is pushed or drawn through a die of the desired crosssection .Any solid or hollow cross-section may be produced by
extrusion, which can create essentially semi-finished parts. The
metal can forcing through a die in the same direction or opposite
direction.

The cross-sections that can be produced vary from solid round,

rectangular, to L shapes, T shapes.

Extrusion may be continuous (theoretically producing indefinitely

long material) or semi-continuous (producing many pieces).
Extrusions can be done with the material hot or cold.

Commonly extruded materials include metals, polymers,

ceramics, and foodstuffs.

Extruded products

Typical products made by extrusion are railings for sliding doors,

tubing having carious cross-sections, structural and architectural
shapes, and door and windows frames.

Extruded products

Direct extrusion: A metal

billet is located into a
container, and a ram
compresses the material,
forcing it to flow through
one or more openings in a
die at the opposite end of
the container.

Indirect extrusion: The die

is mounted to the ram
rather than at the opposite
end of the container. One
advantage of the indirect
extrusion process is that
there is no friction, during
the process, between the
billet and the container
liner

EXTRUSION PROCESS

The process begins by heating the

stock material. It is then loaded into
the container in the press.
A dummy block is placed behind it
where the ram then presses on the
material to push it out of the die.
Afterwards the extrusion is stretched
in order to straighten it. If better
properties are required then it may
be heat treated or cold worked.
The extrusion process is generally
economical when producing
between several pounds and many
tons, depending on the material
being extruded.

Hot Extrusion
Hot extrusion is done at an elevated temperature to keep the material
from work hardening and to make it easier to push the material through
the die. Most hot extrusions are done on horizontal hydraulic presses
that range from 250 to 12,000 tons.
The biggest disadvantage of this process is its cost for machinery and
its upkeep.
Typical parts produced by extrusions are trim parts used in automotive
and construction applications, window frame members, railings,
aircraft structural parts.

Cold Extrusion

Cold extrusion is performed at temperatures significantly below

the melting temperature of the alloy being deformed, and
generally at room temperature.
The process can be used for most materials, provided that
sufficiently robust machinery can be designed.
Products of cold extrusion include aluminium cans, collapsible
tubes and gear blanks.

The advantages of cold extrusion are:

No oxidation takes place

Good mechanical properties due to severe cold working as long
as the temperatures created are below the re-crystallization
temperature
Good surface finish with the use of proper lubricants