Progressive Metal Stamping & Four Slide Stamping Process

Progressive stamping is a system that punches, coins, and bends raw metal in many different ways in combination with an automatic feeding system.

The coiled material is feed into a straightener and then to a progressive die. The die has various stations that perform one or more operations until the finished part is ejected. The last station is the cutoff operation that separates the finished part from the carrying web. This material, along with any punched material is scrap and is ejected and carried away to bins to sell to a metal recycler for profit later.

Most  progressive metal stampings  made in reciprocating stamping presses, although in larger applications a transfer press is used. A reciprocating stamping press moves up and down and the top of the die moves with it, which in turn allows the material to feed. When the press strokes down the die closes and performs the stamping of the material. Every complete rotation of the press produces a complete part. When producing parts on a transfer press, each station is a die and a robotic device and/or conveyer used to move the material from one station to the next until finally a finished part is the product.

Four slide stamping process  is similar in that coiled material comes off a feeder through a straightener and feed through a die, the upper component of which connects to the press slide, and the lower component connects to the press bed. This die has various stations that put impressions, holes, slots, or may even stamp part numbers onto the formed part.

After the material goes through the first, die, it travels to a second position guided by a set of sliding tools that will blank the material from four directions at right angles to one another around a vertical mandrel. The slide forming area is equipped with timed mechanisms called cams regulating slide movements. This process allows four slides to produce complex parts with multiple bends in a quick and efficient manner. The   fourslide stamping process is cost effective because of the process is able to produce material-intensive parts at production rates faster than using traditional methods.

All the tooling used for progressive metal stamping and  fourslide stamping is made of very hard heat-treated tool steel sharpened repeatedly over the life of the dies. It may take longer to set-

up a four slide but the lower expense of tooling and the speed and versatility of the machine makes using them still viable in the twenty-first century.