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The die design of forged products greatly affects the quality, cost, and delivery of cold- and warm-forged products. However, such design is often not easy even for experienced engineers because extensive knowledge and experience of plastic forming, forging, blanking, and punching are required. This paper proposes a general forging die design method termed GeneDie on the basis of the basic die structure and the forming surfaces configuration which are introduced as basic concepts for the support of simple but general die design. The basic die structure is the relative positional inter-relationship among the components of forging dies and is used to represent the structure of forging dies simply. Meanwhile, the forming surfaces configuration is the correspondence between functions allocated to the surfaces of forging dies and the surfaces of a forged product and used to represent the shapes of forming dies concisely. Die design plans are generated by exhaustively assuming a basic die structure and a forming surfaces configuration that satisfy design requirements and then verifying design constraints regarding formability, workability, and economy. An experimental knowledge base is implemented adopting the GeneDie method and applied to a forging process plan for an electrical connector. Experimental results show that die design plans that are functionally equivalent to those of an experienced engineer are included in the plans generated for all forming steps of the forging process plan.

Fine blanking (FB) is a press shearing process that can obtain a smooth clean-cut sheared edge surface in one press stroke. However, the convex portion of the punched out part or product will generally include a large amount of die-roll or shear-droop defined by a component (Z) in the shear plane direction (z-direction) as well as in the planar direction (x-direction). The droop often will cause various product malfunctions, such as decrease in the contact length as in the engagement of a gear pair by the larger z-directional droop, and a reduction of the effective contact area with the x-directional droop. Since the FB process inevitably causes droop, leading to the reduced functionality of parts, the amount of droop is an important factor, when fabricating parts, using the FB method. Therefore, our final aim is to realize fine-blanked components without droop. As the first step, we attempted to predict the dependence of the amount of droop on the FB parameters which include the punch-die clearance, the material and its thickness, the included angle, and the radius of the convex portion in the case of common work piece profile components. From careful observation of the experimental results for various work materials and that were fine-blanked by an FB die set, we were able to obtain a simple and integrated formula to predict the amount of droop. We believe that the use of this formula will increase the efficiency of trial-and-error procedures performed before mass production, enabling the manufacture of components for customers with a shorter lead time.

We propose a process planning method, which is termed the General Step Reduction (GeneSteR) method, for non-axisymmetrical cold- and warm-forged products. The GeneSteR method can produce process plans for non-axisymmetrical forged products without relying on any design cases. The basic principle of the GeneSteR method is to produce reversed forging process plans by reducing the steps that are contained in a forged product by a stepwise approach until a cylindrical billet is obtained. An experimental knowledge base was implemented based on the GeneSteR method and was applied to a universal joint yoke used in automobiles. The experimental results show that the proposed method has sufficient capability to generate satisfactory process plans that include a comparable plan as designed by an experienced engineer in a shorter time.