August 2023 Volume 5

MAINTENANCE

Forge Tooling, Troubleshooting and Maintenance By Jeff Fredline

Forging press equipment and dies undergo significant mechanical and thermal stresses. The constant impact forces can produce stress within and on the surface of the tools. The tools must be properly preheated, aligned, stress relieved and lubricated to insure maximum production life. Production maintenance requires the proper use of welding and machining techniques. Special alloys have been developed and are used widely to prevent cracking, heat checking and minimize wear. The condition of your die space has much to do with the life of the tooling. Parallelism in the die space is critical, as well as the proper alignment between the upper and lower dies. Any out of tolerance condition contributes to the wear and damage in the tooling. The way surfaces that guide ram within the frame must be maintained with the proper amount of lubricant and be free from scoring and excessive wear. This same issue applies to mechanical presses, Preheating the tooling is critical to the life and proper function of the tool. When the die is not properly heated the thermal shock to the tool is greatly increased. A good temperature goal would be 500o F for the tooling and about 100o F for the press or hammer frame. Any tooling marks or scoring/wear on the surface of the tools need to be polished out prior to running. Guttering also needs to be free from wear or defects. Any tooling marks or scoring will lead to premature failure of the tool. Tooling Alignment Forging presses provide a higher level of control over the die space alignment and parallelism. The press machine has a machined die space with ram guides or gibbing to control the slide path as it passes through the stroke of the machine. This applies to both the forging presses and upsetters. Some forging tools allow for guide pins or wedge surfaces to provide additional alignment as the tool closes. To have a productive run, your tooling alignment is critical. Forging Hammers Hammers require ongoing monitoring of the die space. Everything is aligned to the center of the piston rod. The hammer functions best when everything is operated on center. Sometimes it is necessary to shim the sow block to bring the tooling back to center. The top die can also be adjusted left to right by either shimming the hammer columns or using the wedges between the columns and the hammer base. The hammer columns will need to adjust to hold the center upsetters and hammers. Tooling Preparation

line with the piston rod from time to time. The goal is to get the tool to hit on center. The result of running the hammer off center is extreme die wear, and in worst case the piston rod can be broken. The recommendation is that a set of master dies be installed in the hammer about once a week to check alignment and adjustments be made. Die Lubrication Today forged materials are becoming more and more diverse and complex. Proper die lubrication plays a major role in the production throughput for hammers, presses and upsetters. In the past a lot of graphite based lubricants have been used. Today there are many synthetic lubricants that have been developed and the process has improved. The forging environment is difficult. There is a lot of heat and contamination that must be properly dealt with. Efforts need to be made to keep the press and the area around the tool as clean as possible. Preventative Maintenance The forging industry has evolved over the years. There is more competition than ever before. To be able to run profitably any forging operation must take measures to properly maintain the equipment, tooling, and environment around the press. The principles of 5S work well to assist in the maintenance of the work cell. Just remember the statement, “If you fail to schedule machines and tooling for maintenance, your machines and tooling will schedule it for you!” Jeff Fredline Sales Engineer MECO Email: fredline.jeff@gmail.com

FIA MAGAZINE | AUGUST 2023 22