August 2025 Volume 7

FORGING RESEARCH

To anchor their instruction, they visit the plant floor of forging production companies. This year, the class made two trips to Nichols Tillage Tools in Sterling, Colorado. Since 1957, Nichols Tillage Tools has been forging steel sweeps, furrowers, rippers, blades, and other hardware that farmers across the USA and beyond use to till the soil and manage their crops. In Figure 6, Nichols forging engineers Cooper Jackson and Chris Servi are introducing tillage products to students. Then the students get to experience the entire manufacturing process, from forging die and process design, steel blanking, all steps of forging, trimming, heat treating, and finishing operations. Though not shown in photos here, the students experience the all-important die fabrication and maintenance shop, welding and hard-facing operations, and laser cutting of forging blanks.

Figure 8: Forging Engineer Chris Cervi explaining post-forging finishing of forged blades. After walking-down all the manufacturing processes, the students sit with the engineers to learn about the design processes that went into the forgings they experienced, as shown in Figure 9. It is noteworthy that the Nichols Tillage Tool engineers rely on resources from the Forging Industry Association to develop and refine their forging processes. The design process includes iterative simulations using finite element methods. In one example, students were shown a part that went through 20 iterations of design improvements to achieve the high-quality process that Nichols implements today.

Figure 6: Students being oriented to forged steel Ultrawing sweeps and other forged products. For most students, the facility tour is the first time they have seen a 2000-ton press in operation, as shown in Figure 7. The Nichols engineers introduce the students to considerations in press selection, product flow through the production plant, and the economics at every stage of manufacturing, including post-forge finishing, as illustrated in Figure 8. Classroom experience

Figure 9: Forging Engineers Chris Cervi and Cooper Jackson explaining forging process design. The forging courses at the Colorado School of Mines benefit from the technical environment that supports manufacturing and metals education. The university was founded in 1874 to be a prominent resource for the mining and metals industries. This role is even written into the State of Colorado constitution. Today, the richness of the environment for metals manufacturing education and research is amplified by its research centers, including the Advanced Steel Processing and Products Research Center (in its 50th year), the Center for Advanced Non-Ferrous Structural Alloys, the Manufacturing and Materials Joining Innovation Center, and the International Center for Multiscale

Figure 7: Students in front of Nichols Tillage Tools 2000 ton Ajax mechanical press to watch forging production (though they are just posing for a photo here).

FIA MAGAZINE | AUGUST 2025 66