Design of Compound Die for Production of Cutting Blades for Nonactive Rotary Paddy Weeder

Press working is a chip-less manufacturing process on sheet metal through the application of immense force with the help of press tools for short interval and hence results in shearing or deformation of the work material. It is a chip-less manufacturing process by which various components are made from sheet metal. A compound die is one that is used for cutting operations only, and the operation is completed by a single-press stroke. In this article, a die was designed to serve the purpose of cutting down the blades for paddy weeder and clearances to be provided in the die were calculated so as to reduce the material consumption with reduction in production cycle time. The die thus designed served for the purpose with 73% reduction in production time, with enhanced quality and helped in enabling mass production by eliminating several processes such as marking, cutting done with the help of a cutter, shaping, and so on.