Hot forging in the fashion sector
Hot forging presses are also used in the fashion industry manufacturing.
The worldwide fashion sector is characterized by extremely significant business volumes: around 3 thousand billion euros and it employs 50 million people.
Italy is one of main districts for the fashion industry with historic brands and production chains deeply rooted in the territory.
The sector is affected by global uncertainties linked to inflation, geopolitical tensions, post-Covid recovery but double-digit growth is estimated in the coming years. The increase in business volume is possible thanks to a high dynamism full of creativity and style which canalizes an important flow of news and innovations every season.
The digitalization of sales channels and operational departments and the near-shoring approach have created the need to make the manufacturing process increasingly productive and efficient.
Metals hot forging is a key operation to characterize fashion products and accessories. The logos of the major brands applied on bags, shoes, clothes and belts are made through hot forging and then finished with other downstream processes.
Mecolpress has been the protagonist of this continuous growth process, offering technologically advanced forging solutions with the aim of:
- Increasing production capacity up to 1500 pieces per hour;
- Reducing machine downtimes due to maintenance and tool changes (availability >95%);
- Reducing the consumption of materials, energy and CO2 emissions by 50% (GREEN TECHNOLOGY Industry 5.0);
- Allowing the digital communication between production line and company system and remote diagnostic access (Industry 4.0);
- Flexibility in forging products of different sizes and materials (steel/brass/aluminium);
- Increasing the safety of the production line by reducing human intervention (industry 5.0).
TDS Electrical Torque-Driven Screw presses
TDS Electrical Torque-Driven Screw presses result to be particularly suitable for the hot forging of parts destined to fashion sector.
Here below the 4 strong points that make many customers to prefer these hot forging screw presses:
- Cycle time does not dependent on forging energy => always optimized productivity
- Reduction of friction parts => less maintenance and less energy consumption
- Flexibility in energy settings => production flexibility for product size and type of material (brass, steel, aluminium) and reduction in dies wear
- Energy recovery of braking energy => reduction in energy consumption
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Complete forging lines integration
Even in the fashion sector, the frequent request is to have complete forging lines.
We can supply the line following the customer need, so in addition to the hot forging press, we integrate the cutting, heating, forging and deburring of the forged pieces.
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The presses for forging of parts destined to fashion sector have to optimize the process phases:
Automation of machine loading and unloading
We underlined the importance of automating the loading and unloading phases of pieces. The presses must include certain solutions to guarantee maximum performance:
- High-speed Cartesian systems for heated material loading.
- Flexible anthropomorphic robots for heated material loading.
- Unloading of the forged product via air blow to avoid sliding and contact defects.
- Folding of the material to be forged to have a shape as close as possible to the forged parts and to reduce material consumption.
- Possibility of different shapes of the starting material from the traditional round billet to customized shapes (letters, symbols, …).
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Productive process data control system
An important solution to take into consideration to start a successful hot forging project for parts in the fashion sector is certainly to equip yourself with a control system of the productive process.
Mecolpress Calipso Software allows to monitor and to adjust the data connected to forging process, and it presents numerous advantages, among which:
- Based on HMI architecture complete with touch screen display
- Functioning parameters of the press and of the auxiliaries that can be inserted from the display.
- For each forging cycle, the main parameters are saved for collection and analysis.
- Integrable with company MES/MRP systems.
- Remote access for diagnostics and problems solving
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Dies lubrication
The proper dies lubrication makes the difference for a successful hot forging process.
A correct lubrication does not mean a lot of lubrication, but it must be properly dosed, the most suitable lubricants must be chosen based on the metal to be forged and the required piece.
We propose:
- Automatic air-oil lubrication unit managed by the control panel.
- Up to 30 lubrication points.
- Automated lubrication arm synchronized with the forging cycle.
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Dies changing system
To allow a quick unlocking, the die holder has been optimized, and the auxiliary arm becomes essential for bringing the dies out of the working area of the press.
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Dies pre-heating
This is an important phase of the hot forging productive process that foresees the use of modern induction technologies avoiding open flames or CO2 emissions.
In the fashion sector, therefore, hot forging presses and related devices are widely used.
It is always important to develop an accurate and successful forging project to maximize profits and reduce waste.
Screw presses
Come to discover the application sectors and the functioning of Mecolpress screw presses. Used for hot forging, these presses can be employed with every type of material and are distinguished by the realization of full parts.
Screw presses functioning
Mecolpress offers a wide range of presses both hydraulic and mechanical. Also screw presses fall into this last category, ideal for hot forging of parts of great dimensions or that require more passages for shaping. These mechanical screw presses can be provided with a disc friction control or a direct control with electric servomotor.
The screw press choice is determined according to the type of part you want to forge. Hallmark of the screw press is its ratio force-machine dimension, that results greater than the specific one of an eccentric mechanical press.
These mechanical presses can be used with every type of material and the frequency of strokes is quite reduced. For this reason, there is a tendency to use this machine for the production of little batches, that is often true for parts of great dimensions.
Mecolpress offers to its customers three lines of screw presses: Dellavia series and Osterwalder series that are friction screw presses, and TDS series with electric motor. All the screw presses models can be integrated with complete and automatic forging lines, that from bar raw material realize finished forged parts.
The tonnage can go from 170 tons up to more than 2.700 tons, to be chosen according to the geometrical shape you want to obtain and of course to the material to be forged.
The applications
The screw presses are used for the realization of parts destined to different application fields including for example, watch cases, parts for sport equipment, for automotive or for biomedical titanium prothesis.
So, it is possible to produce very small parts, such as for example, clothing zipper pullers till to aluminum sport bows of 1 m of length. The parts, produced by this type of machine, are not cored but full.
The screw presses are very used also in the fashion field to realize belt and bag buckles, with brand-specific shape.
In order to understand which model is more suitable to your production needs, all you have to do is to address to Mecolpress sales department. Thanks to the experience gained with years of activity in the hot forging field, we can suggest the most performing machine according to the type of part you want to forge, and it is possible to carry out a test directly at our premises.