Test of Time

Posted by stephens on Sep 3, 2010 in Engineering Decisions, Events, Tips & Techniques | 0 comments

While thumbing through the GM Die Standards last night, two things were lost upon me until that moment. One is that I am the last surviving industry active person to have written a die standards book for an OEM. From scratch. I guess that is kind of like being the oldest person alive in a morbid way. The second is the organization of the book is still relevant...

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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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Little Things Matter

Posted by stephens on Aug 24, 2010 in Engineering Decisions, Tips & Techniques | 0 comments

“Are you serious?” was my response to Bob Martin at Bud Martin’s Hardware store last night at 8:33 PM. The store closed just minutes before I arrived, and I needed a bolt. After a day in the cutthroat trenches of the die world, I found that the little things matter. Funny how things turn out. See, we just moved to a new community in a small...

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Motor City Squares

Posted by stephens on Aug 2, 2010 in Engineering Decisions, Rants, Tips & Techniques | 4 comments

My view of dies is their architecture should be driven by both the production volume and material strength of the stampings. Unfortunately, this is fuzzy in practice. Many die standards and quoting systems do not take both into account. The illustration below captures how I believe dies should be built based on the combination of production life and material...

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Quoting Method Madness

Posted by stephens on Jul 26, 2010 in Engineering Decisions, Rants, Tips & Techniques | 3 comments

The quoting methods in the stamping industry are a blend of black magic and bullshit. You have your good old fashioned Sight Method. That is where someone looks at the part and says, “That is a $250,000 die right there.” How the fuck do they know that? “Experience.” Then, there is the Length-of-Line Method. You know that one. Measure some...

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Running Scared

Posted by stephens on May 27, 2010 in Cam Dies, Engineering Decisions | 0 comments

Here is a note from my long-time die guy pal Pete Ulintz. Y’all know Pete; he took over the Tooling by Design column I used to write in MetalForming magazine. I am sure most of you have heard Pete speak at PMA events or have visited his website ToolingByDesign.com. This is his note: Tim, I like your blog regarding restrike operations. I have another...

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Commodity Codes Suck

Posted by stephens on May 26, 2010 in Engineering Decisions, Rants | 2 comments

Why is it that, when I either process a stamping or setup a formability simulation for any company in any industry on any continent, I get some proprietary commodity code for a material specification from the customer? Commodity codes suck, and I will tell you why: they are completely useless. Every company that needs sheet steel to manufacture products buys the...

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Over-used Engineering Terms

Posted by stephens on May 24, 2010 in Engineering Decisions, Rants | 4 comments

Here is my Top 5 list of words that I feel are over-used in the die engineering community. In order, 1. Robust 2. Optimize 3. Checklist 4. Benchmark 5. Psychobeotch Yes, psychobeotch is all the rage. While hearing “robust” makes me taste vomit, “psychobeotch” gives me a Fatal Attraction...

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Another Strike

Posted by stephens on May 22, 2010 in Engineering Decisions, Rants | 5 comments

The discussion on the validity of restrike dies continues with a comment from Eric Kam that I would like to post here instead of comments due to length: It seems to me that the reason that the restrike is more appealing and rational than the trim line correction… by creating an adjustment point closer to the final destination (the conveyor belts and the...

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Strike the Restrike

Posted by stephens on May 18, 2010 in Engineering Decisions, Rants | 6 comments

It seems as though stampers that are running anything but 1008-1010 steel want restrike dies for flanges. This is flawed. Restrike, or spank, dies are intended to sharpen feature lines and plussed radii. Radii that is too sharp to be formed home in the draw or form operation. Somewhere along the way, it became acceptable then fashionable to use restrike...

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