Some aspects of the development of cold forging to a high-tech precision technology

Abstract

Although developed since 1935, the advantages of the cold-forging technology with emphasis on steel as component material have not yet been used to its full potential on a broad scale by industry. However, a significant standard in complexity of geometry end precision combined with excellent part performance has been achieved in a few industrialized countries by a few progressive companies since about 1960. This paper describes the complex structure of the cold-forging process with a variety of interfaces between material, tribology, tool, machine tool and automation, etc., under the aspect of the requirements for precision cold forging. Among other items the FEM- and BEM-methods are presented as powerful tools for the optimization of product and tool. © 1992.