Brass hot forging: from the mechanical technology to the hydraulic one with me series presses
Metals hot forging is a reliable and repeatable process which allows to obtain components with high mechanical properties, minimizing the raw materials consumption.
Over more than 50 years Mecolpress has been at the service of its Customers, providing the best forging technologies that allow to maximize the products quality and the related productivity.
Not always changing means improvement, but to improve you need to change
Mecolpress is committed every day to sharing experiences with its partners to follow a common path with the aim of overcoming the performance limits of existing production processes.
It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent one, but the most responsive one to changes.
Exclusively from the merge of the complementary activities:
- Development of innovative technologies;
- From consolidated experience in the hot forged parts production, the way for barriers overcoming in the productive processes can be born;
- Increase of production capacity;
- Improvement of product quality;
- Reduction of raw material consumption;
- Reduction of energy consumption;
- Reduction of resources consumption (lubricants, cooling water,…).
The experience shown in this article is related to the brass hot forging
and more precisely to the passage from the mechanical to the hydraulic technology (Mecolpress ME Series). The product subject of the evaluation is the body of a sphere valve with dimension 1” and ½. Even if it may seem a standard and consolidated product, each customer has his own design and specific features.
Mecolpress has collaborated with an Italian industry-leader company to the production of the new die and to its industrialization. After two working days and proactive information sharing, by using our ME hydraulic press, we have reached:
- Production capacity more than doubled;
- Material consumption minimized of about 6.5% thanks to the flashfree forging;
- Improvement of the workability thanks to a more uniform internal conformation;
- Increase of product quality thanks to internal defects removal.
Even if at first sight a forged part may seem perfect, its integrity can be granted only from the internal analysis.
The material flow is unbalanced, the flowing speeds are not uniform, the material tends to detach from the die and to fill some areas before others (picture 1). When the flows meet each other again, they have such temperatures that they cannot be properly welded. The cold welding, indicated by the red circle, can cause problems during the machining phase, if it is included, even partially, in the surplus metal, or if during the assembly phase when the tightening torque of the front nut mechanically stresses the defected side.
Mecolpress hydraulic presses of ME Series, even without any previous simulation numerical analysis, allow to set the correct sequence of part forming according to the material flow dynamics.
Thanks to this precious pre-forming function a progressive modification of the penetrations of the 3 punches has been applied and this has leaded to the desired result: the repositioning of the defect in a marginal zone (picture 2).
Then simple modifications to punches shape were taken into consideration in order to totally eliminate the cold junction (picture 3).
Two really efficient working days, product industrialization with new dies and more than 5500 good parts in the boxes, ready for the machining tests! A thank goes to our Customer for the precious collaboration, a thank to our team for the availability and speed of action and a thank to our hydraulic ME press that tirelessly, once again, allows to overcome the production limits and to permit a great improvement!
Wait!!! And what about energetic consumptions?!?! We are collecting data… a little patience… in the next article you will be informed about everything!
Biography of our hot forging blog
At the beginning of 2017 Mecolpress decided to start a blog entirely devoted to the hot forging world.
We set for it 2 goals:
- Being a reference point for hot forging companies, above all if these are first-time forgers.
- Supporting the companies having a long hot forging experience but that want to optimize their process, to better use their presses and to find answers to the necessities they meet step by step.
We have realized, doing some internet researches that it is very difficult to gather information regarding the hot forging world.
On Google you can find anything, but you will barely find suggestions or detailed deepening on hot forging!
Frequently we happen to be contacted by beginner hot forging companies, or companies having inexpert or not particularly qualified personnel (for example you can read this article) and all of these want to have further information.
We are aware that it is not possible to become expert forgers or to learn a job from Google but it is equally true that in 2020 I have to find answers on the internet to my necessities and some deepening on the topic.
Who are we?
Mecolpress is a company specialized in the production and installation of hot forging presses for brass, aluminum, copper, titanium, steel and other alloys.
Mecolpress was established in 1969, therefore we have a long forging experience and knowledge.
In our production workshop we have persons extremely expert in brass hot forging, and recently we have inserted in our staff also a steel “technologist”, we have available a mechanic and electronic technical office completely internal and a highly appreciated customer-care service.
To date we have developed and installed more than 1.950 presses at more than 400 customers all over the world, used for the forging of brass, aluminum, copper, titanium and steel.
One of the features that our customers usually appreciate most is the after sales service: the great and guaranteed material availability is added to the expertise and solid knowledge of the machines. The efficient feedback of Mecolpress lies in the largeness of the areas dedicated to the storage of parts that can be requested by the customers (we have 2 devoted warehouses) and in the investments decided exactly in favour of the “warehouse”.
Why writing a blog regarding hot forging?
At this point we said “why not sharing part of our skills online? For example, with a company from South Africa that is wondering if it’s worth it to convert his production in a hot forging system?”
“And in addition, could all the expert forgers (Mecolpress customer or not) be interested to understand if there are improvements to apply to their production? The world has changed and even fields such as the hot forging one may seem as more “static” but, as a matter of fact, they are not. If you don’t stay up to date you will lose important commissions and the quality of your work won’t evolve!
Which kind of answers will you find on this blog?
With our blog we offer ideas and tips to improve each forging process. To manage the machines and the forging lines in the best way in order to obtain the best productivity, more flexibility and less maintenance.
The topics that according to us are easier to speak on are the technical ones, thanks to the experience acquired in 50 years of activity and to our numbers, but we try to maintain a character that can be easily understood also to the less experienced companies, remaining at disposal for further in-depth detailed explanation.
In the “Case Study” category you will find for example:
- How we could help a German customer of ours to win successfully a challenge, to forge a very complex set of parts that he didn’t dare to accept as an order.
- Is it possible to reduce the gate valves costs by forging without flash? It is possible by means of ME hydraulic presses.
- Is your screw press driving you crazy? You could have disregarded what for you is just a detail, but our experience taught us that it can make the difference!
We propose solutions to problems caused by a not optimal usage of the presses or screw presses, by the inexperience; these are requests that we collect from our after-sales department. We give voice to necessities that also for expertised hot forging companies sometime can appear as complex.
A challenge we can win for our customer means for us a great satisfaction!