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How Precision Stamping Affects the Quality and Volume of Component Manufacturing

 

In today’s competitive markets, achieving exceptional quality and high-volume production is often essential for success. When your business needs to produce parts at a mass scale, you have several options, depending on the material and part complexity you need. If you need metal parts, consider precision stamping. Precision metal stamping is excellent for ensuring consistently high quality in high-volume component manufacturing.

Learn more about precision stamping, the manufacturing issues it can address, its benefits and its common applications to decide if it’s right for your business.

 

Understanding Precision Metal Stamping

 

Precision metal stamping is a high-speed process that manufactures metal components by stamping them out of sheet metal with specialized tools and progressive dies. This versatile and efficient process allows manufacturers to create shapes with undercuts, thin walls or multiple features. By using progressive dies with specialized presses, metal stamping makes accurate components with consistent repeatability at high speeds, making it cost-effective and ideal for high-volume production runs. It’s often used in industries that require high quality and scalability.

 

Common Pain Points

 

When manufacturing parts, a few different issues affect efficiency and quality:

  • Material waste: Using materials inefficiently can increase production costs and even contribute to delays if manufacturers have to procure more material unexpectedly. Material waste can also lead to environmental concerns related to scrap disposal and increased material and storage costs.
  • Surface imperfections: Poor aesthetic quality, such as dents, scratches and uneven finishes, can damage a part’s functionality as well as its appearance. These imperfections can also affect the component’s resistance to corrosion and wear.
  • Slow production speed: Long production times can cause other issues, such as missed deadlines, increased costs and decreased productivity. Slow cycles can also affect a company’s ability to respond to market demands and fulfill customer orders promptly.
  • Inconsistent or inaccurate dimensions: Each component must meet exact specifications, and deviations can mean parts don’t fit correctly or work properly. Inconsistent or inaccurate parts can cause assembly problems, performance issues and product recalls.

Evolution of Technology

 

Modern stamping tech addresses these pain points, achieving better precision, more efficient use of materials and higher production speeds. Here’s how:

  • Material optimization: Modern stamping can use many different metals, including stainless steel, aluminum, copper and brass. With stamping, manufacturers can adjust the process to optimize the material and reduce waste. Progressive dies allow manufacturers to create multiple parts in a single run and reduce scrap.
  • Precision tooling: Well-designed dies ensure quality parts and reduce the chances of scratches and dents. Additional tools for polishing or applying coatings improve the appearance and function of components.
  • Automation and robotics: Automating metal stamping improves production speed and efficiency, creating a high volume of components quickly. Automation improves repeatability and consistency.
  • Advanced capabilities: Precision tools and automation allow manufacturers to achieve higher accuracy and tighter tolerances in part dimensions, ensuring components fit and function reliably.

 

If you think you’ll use stamping, work with a manufacturer early so they can help you design for manufacturing (DFM). Using a DFM process means designing a part with the manufacturing process in mind, reducing the risk of redesigning components or using a complicated and expensive manufacturing process. For example, you might design parts with uniform wall thicknesses to work better with metal stamping.

 

How Precision Stamping Improves Component Quality

 

In component manufacturing, quality is key. Precision metal stamping can create millions of parts with tight tolerances, meaning there is little variation between the final part and the intended dimensions. This accuracy ensures components fit into larger assemblies and improves product performance.

Because components are made with the same tool and stamped from the same material, metal stamping produces more uniform parts, with equal thicknesses and surface finishes. Once the tools are set up, there’s little or no adjustment necessary between runs, guaranteeing consistency across large production volumes. This method can make complex shapes with minimal tool changes, reducing the risk of errors and maintaining high quality standards.

 

How Precision Stamping Improves Manufacturing Efficiency

 

gear and clock icon next to the words stamping enables rapid production cycles

 

High-volume metal stamping manufacturing is much better for high-volume runs compared to other metalworking processes, such as welding, fabrication and CNC machining. It’s easy to scale metal stamp production runs for improved efficiency. Stamping enables rapid production cycles and high throughput but also works well for short runs. Automation and advanced tooling help maximize efficiency by allowing for higher uptime.

Metal stamping also improves cost efficiency since it minimizes secondary operations, such as drilling holes or cutting threads, which often increase costs and time to market. Even if secondary operations are required, they may cost less than creating multiple tools for complex shapes. Secondary operations allow manufacturers to make multipart products in the same run.

Metal stamping may have higher upfront costs to create the precision stamping tools, but then you can use the tools for the life of the project to create millions of parts. Because precision stamping can make so many parts, the cost per piece is often lower than other metalworking processes.

 

Precision Metal Machining Applications

Metal stamping is useful in many industries since it provides precision, quality and efficiency. Here’s how some sectors use precision stamping:

  • Aerospace: Air- and spacecraft require parts with tight tolerances to keep everyone safe. Metal stamping creates precision components for many systems, including communications, electronics and mechanical parts.
  • Automotive: Car manufacturers use precision stamping to ensure components are uniform and fit together properly.
  • Electronics: From consumer electronics to advanced telecom hardware, the electronics industry uses metal stamping to manufacture circuit board components, electrical connectors and battery terminals.
  • Healthcare: For healthcare, precision metal stamping is used to create implants, diagnostic equipment and surgical instruments.
  • Prototyping: Stamped part prototyping capabilities allow manufacturers to create parts in days, not weeks, for a shorter iterative process. Precision stamping can create undercuts, deep draws and thin walls, which are often challenging to produce with other manufacturing methods.

Choose New Concept Technology for Precision Metal Stamping

 

New Concept Technology offers high-speed metal stamping solutions to provide superior results and streamline operations. When you partner with us, we can assist with every step of manufacturing, from design engineering and tool fabrication to stamping, molding and assembly. Our comprehensive services, industry-leading equipment and expert team ensure efficiency in production. Additionally, we are certified through the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Automotive Task Force (IATF), so you can rely on us to manufacture high-quality components.

We can design and fabricate custom stamped metal parts to meet your requirements. If you need punching, shaping, cutting or other metal stamping, reach out to our specialists today to discover how precision stamping can improve your component manufacturing processes.

 

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