Cold forming versus machining: is one better than the other? 

Learn about the advantages of cold forming in this video from the experts at Fostermation.

John:
Cold forming versus machining. Cold forming is a pretty neat process because you're taking material and displacing it. So there's no loss of material, and you're taking very fast, hard pressure and a die typically usually off a flywheel so you got the--

Anthony:
Different types of equipment with different dies to form.

John:
Yeah I mean, it's pretty basic. It's old school. I mean, it's been done forever. But you're displacing material to fill a void and a die. Taking very extreme, high pressure and hitting this material. I think it's neat. It's something I enjoy seeing. We've been doing it forever and there's a lot of reasons behind it. High volume jobs, cold forming typically are a lot quicker than increasing--

Anthony:
It's increased efficiency with reduced cost, basically. With our cold forming processes, using these dyes and this equipment that John is talking about, it really allows us to have a higher capacity producing parts faster; it also reduces waste which in turn, less material waste being more cost-effective.

John:
Let's say like take a quarter-inch diameter piece of material wire, and you need let's say, what's the normal one that we do from 250?

Anthony:
3/8 inch thread or something like that.

John:
Instead of cutting and turning all that material down, and you're losing that material. So if you use cool forming you're actually forming a die. You're not actually losing any material so you reduce the cost of all the scrap that you have.

Anthony:
And then kind of going from what John said too. From traditional machining to cold forming is with the increased cycle time, it's a lot faster using this process than it is from a traditional-- let's say machining or turning a part down to whereas when you're cold forming, it's basically going through this piece of equipment and forming whether it's a thread, a neural, an upset, any other type of operations for cold forming.

John:
That's like enough says a diameter that's bigger than starting material.

Anthony:
Heading. Heading with another heading's another big one. Especially that I've seen, if we have the dies or if we have the equipment available for heading, instead of turning down a quarter-inch diameter head to an eighth-inch body diameter you can produce a part with an eighth-inch body diameter, and then use a secondary operation to head to get that head. Thus creating a lot quicker time to produce that item. So I think that's another big one.

John:
I mean, I think a typical example of that is a typical door hinge. You got that headed part that sits on top of there; instead of turning all that material down and leaving a head, it's just all wasted material and you're taking that time. Turning that on a traditional lathe would take forever. Whereas, if you can just do a straight and cut rod and then stick it and head it as a secondary, and then there's no material wasting.

Anthony:
Punches it, displaces it, and then it gets you your head that you need.

John:
I mean, I think a typical example of that is a typical door hinge. You got that headed part that sits on top of there; instead of turning all that material down and leaving a head, it's just all wasted material and you're taking that time. Turning that on a traditional lathe would take forever. Whereas, if you can just do a straight and cut rod and then stick it and head it as a secondary, and then there's no material wasting.

John:
And it’s super fast.

Anthony:
I think another thing, too, it's really interesting with the process, and a lot of people know is actually doing this cold forming process that we're discussing, it actually increases your tensile strength.

John:
Yeah, increases it, makes materials a lot harder, parts a lot harder. And then also, corrosion and stuff like that, It doesn't open up the material to air. It's like where if it's cold drawing down and then you turn it. That is going to leave gaps on the material. Because you take that surface off and then and you are susceptible to corrosion a lot quicker. Honestly, if I could do a lot of these parts headed, or cool formed, or whatever, it would honestly be better. It's just the processes there to be more automated is not there anymore.

Anthony:
Correct, yeah. Having the equipment available as well or the dies. I mean it can get costly, for sure but--

John:
Tooling charges would be up there for that kind of stuff. Whereas stational, a traditional turning of a product, you can get turning tools anywhere kind of thing and it cuts costs on the tooling, but upfront if it's going to be a high-volume job it's worth it. Buying the dies and everything like that. With the traditional thread, if people request a turned or formed thread, we typically know why. Because you want those threads. Threads would be a lot harder, they last longer. That's what you see a lot of your fasteners, they’re cold form. They're not turned on a machine. They are cold form. That's typically how you get most of your fasteners, your bolts fasteners, and stuff like that. The repeatability and the consistency of the parts with cold forming usually run a lot better because the dies and everything. It's a repeated hit and they're filling the same dies, the dies don't wear as often as tooling for turning applications. The tooling wears a lot less.

Anthony:
From an end process standpoint, for quality, let's just say if there were issues with the parts. it's a lot easier to recognize “okay well maybe the die was worn, there wasn't enough pressure being applied.” So if there tends to be a concern with the cold forming processes it’s usually a lot easier to target and adjust it as needed to fix the problem thus producing better quality.