Nearly every cold or hot formed sheet metal component has to be cut to reach its final geometry. By considering the need to use ever scarcer resources more efficiently and the increasing critical evaluation of products in terms of their energy requirement during production, blanking with mechanical tools like conventional, fine or precision blanking is still an energy-efficient and cost-saving alternative for the mass production of formed sheet metal components.
In addition to the most important factors that influence blanking such as the material properties, microstructure and geometry of the component, this research document gives an overview of the usable tool concepts and the state of the art technology available for single stroke shear cutting.
The process window could be increased by changing the stress conditions and by modifying the process parameters, thereby improving the final cutting surface quality. This was proven in experiments by increasing cutting speed during blanking, and by the superposition of compressive stress in precision blanking.
The profitability as well as the energy and resource efficiency calculations, for a particular component, clearly showed the economic advantage that high speed impact cutting (HSIC) holds over conventional, fine and precision blanking. There is now a quality index available enabling a quantitative comparison between different types of blanking. The important parameters are the roll-over and burr height as well as angle and the roughness of the shear and fracture zones.
A summary of the studied literature, the experimental results, the comparison of the blanking characteristics and the developed algorithm all support the decision making process to select the most appropriate blanking process for a particular component geometry.