Mohamed Aboelfotouh
A mold or die that fails in the press stops production, damages itself further while it fails, and has to be repaired under time pressure. Most of those failures give warning: a vent filling up, a spring losing force, a punch edge rounding, a water channe ....
Continue Reading
Mohamed Aboelfotouh
A tooling quotation is a forecast of hours and purchases for a product that does not exist yet. Estimate too low and the job loses money; too high and it goes to a competitor. Buyers face the mirror image: without knowing how a price is built, they cannot ....
Continue Reading
Mohamed Aboelfotouh
Tool steel alone cannot always resist the wear, sticking and corrosion that molds and dies meet in service. A surface treatment adds a thin layer that is harder, slides better, or resists chemical attack. The common treatments differ greatly in hardness, ....
Continue Reading
Mohamed Aboelfotouh
Conventional roughing of tool steel uses a wide radial cut and a shallow depth. Only the bottom few millimetres of the cutter do the work, they do it under high load and heat, and the tool is worn out while most of its flute length is still new. Trochoida ....
Continue Reading
Mohamed Aboelfotouh
A used cutting edge is a record of what happened in the cut. The position and shape of the wear show whether the speed was too high or too low, whether the grade was too hard or too soft, and whether heat or mechanical load did the damage. Machinists who ....
Continue Reading
Mohamed Aboelfotouh
Wire EDM cuts punches, die openings, inserts and stripper plates from hardened steel with a thin wire and no cutting force. The accuracy and surface it delivers depend mostly on one decision: how many passes are made. One rough cut is fast and adequate fo ....
Continue Reading
Mohamed Aboelfotouh
Twenty years ago, almost every hardened mold cavity was finished by sinker EDM. Today, stiff high-speed machines and coated carbide tools can mill steel at 50–60 HRC to final size and finish. Hard milling is usually faster and leaves a better surfac ....
Continue Reading
Mohamed Aboelfotouh
Every milling operation is defined by a small set of numbers: cutting speed, feed per tooth, and the width and depth of cut. Catalogues give recommended values, but the machine needs spindle speed and table feed, and the catalogue values assume a short, r ....
Continue Reading
Mohamed Aboelfotouh
Punches and die inserts fail in a small number of ways: they wear, chip, crack, pick up sheet material, or deform. Each failure points to a different property of the tool steel. The usual mistake is to answer every problem with a harder or more expensive ....
Continue Reading
Mohamed Aboelfotouh
Before a blanking or piercing die is designed, three numbers are needed: the force to cut the material, the force to strip it off the punches, and the size of press that can deliver both with a margin. The calculation is short, but several details are reg ....
Continue Reading
Mohamed Aboelfotouh
Deep drawing turns a flat blank into a cup or box by pulling the material through a die with a punch. Whether the part can be made in one draw or needs several, how large the blank must be, and how much force is needed can all be calculated before any too ....
Continue Reading
Mohamed Aboelfotouh
Every bent sheet metal part opens up slightly when the tool releases it. This is springback. If the die is built to the drawing angle, the part comes out wrong by that amount. With mild steel the error is a degree or two and easy to absorb. With stainless ....
Continue Reading
Mohamed Aboelfotouh
The strip layout is the plan of a progressive die: it shows how the part develops from the flat strip, station by station, until it is cut free. It fixes the material cost per part, the number of stations, the size of the die and the press it needs. Mista ....
Continue Reading
Mohamed Aboelfotouh
The productivity of an extrusion press is decided by how fast each die can run without defects. That speed is not a free choice. It is boxed in by the pressure the press can deliver, by the temperature at which the surface starts to tear, and by the minim ....
Continue Reading
Mohamed Aboelfotouh
A new extrusion die rarely runs perfectly on its first billet. The first length that leaves the die, the nose piece, shows how the metal flows through each part of the opening. Reading it correctly tells the die corrector where the flow is fast, where it ....
Continue Reading