Days of Our Lives

Posted by stephens on Aug 31, 2010 in Automated Transactions, Engineering Decisions, Equations | 0 comments

My day is like a soap opera: one big meaningless drama that never seems to end. Let’s take one trivial example. I am tasked with creating an automated calculation in Excel that computes the number of days waiting for a job to get reviewed. The existing table had the start and end dates that are manually typed by the user. Simple enough. Like I always say,...

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Solids Works

Posted by stephens on May 1, 2010 in Automated Transactions, Tips & Techniques | 6 comments

I have been experimenting, developing, testing, and using solid modeling technology since 1989. If you are not using parametric and associative solid modeling to engineer dies, then you are not really playing at the same level in the same game as the rest of us. An acquaintance of mine, Ray Proeber, is a huge solid modeling evangelist for die design. Check out...

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Convenience

Posted by stephens on Mar 8, 2010 in Automated Transactions, Engineering Decisions, Web Technologies | 0 comments

My son has a 1st grade homework assignment that requires him to interview me on how technology has changed since I was a 1st grader. This got me thinking about how much change we have seen in the die business in the past 20 years. Most in the business today take solid modeling and formability simulation for granted. When I got started, it was all manual. The...

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Toys in the Sandbox

Posted by stephens on Mar 5, 2010 in Automated Transactions, Rants, Tips & Techniques | 0 comments

A friend of mine asked for some old articles I have written for MetalForming Magazine. I stumbled across one of my favorites … and I would like to share it here: When I saw a die design for an automotive body stamping for the first time, it was a confusing sea of intersecting lines drawn on paper with a pencil. Bond and H-lead to be exact. The only...

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Costing is not Quoting

Posted by stephens on Oct 4, 2009 in Automated Transactions, Engineering Decisions | 3 comments

There has been much discussion on the web lately about quoting and costing software for stamping dies. Costing is not quoting. The calculated or estimated cost has no practical relation to the quoted price for two reasons. First, the price that will win the work relies exclusively on what the customer is willing to pay. End of story. The customer does not care...

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Mind Reader

Posted by stephens on Sep 26, 2009 in Automated Transactions, Engineering Decisions | 0 comments

My blessing and sometimes curse is the ability to look at a two-dimensional part print and visualize the stamping process and the three-dimensional mechanics of each tool. In the manual design days, the vision of the tool design would go from my brain to my hands and end up on paper with pencil and speedraft. For me, CAD interrupts this seamless transition...

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Faster Than You

Posted by stephens on Sep 2, 2009 in Automated Transactions, Engineering Decisions | 0 comments

My pal Eric Kam has an excellent post about estimating dies. He is correct in that most shops do not know their actual costs to build a one-off stamping die. Eric is also correct that the estimate of costs by these shops has a high degree of variation. I think the intellectual argument he suggests is valid, but the culture of the die business will get hung up on...

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Speedraft Overview

Posted by stephens on Aug 19, 2009 in Automated Transactions, Demos | 0 comments

Here is an overview of how Speedraft helps you save time and money:

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qCalculus

Posted by stephens on Aug 15, 2009 in Automated Transactions, Engineering Decisions | 0 comments

There was a discussion on a LinkedIn tool and die group recently about how long it takes to quote a progressive die. One response was simply “two weeks”. This is wrong. Even assuming it takes two weeks to quote each progressive die, the statement “two weeks”, to be accurate, implies the die shop has 100% conversion. In other words, the...

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No Stock Movement

Posted by stephens on Jul 3, 2009 in Automated Transactions | 0 comments

Progressive dies must be engineered to take No Stock Movement (NSM) into account. This is the time during the press upstroke that the feeder has to wait for the die components to be clear of the coil. Feeders have a limited amount of time to index the coil one progression. This time is measured in crank angle degrees. Most feeders have 180° of time to feed....

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