Open-Die Drop Hammer Forging
With open-die forging, a hot billet or ingot is placed under a hammer and formed into the desired shape. The smith move the material as it is shaped, lending this type of production to components that are custom made.
Closed-Die Drop Forging
Sometimes called impression-die forging, the heated billet or ingot is often hammered into a die that resembles a mold of the desired parts. As the materials are struck, the metal will be forced into the cavities of the die.
Press Forging
Press forging presses the metal into a desired shape in a slower process compressing the metal inside the piece as well. Unlike drop forgings, which use multiple strikes to form the metal, press forgings use tremendous pressure. The ability to deliver consistent pressure over a controlled time period allows press forgings to create exact strain rates and closer tolerances.
This is also one of the more economic forging processes available. Entire components can be formed in one press, with fewer size limitations. Unlike drop hammer forging, which only deforms the exterior of the workpiece; press forging is able to deform both the exterior and total interior all at once.
Forging Processes Not Provided by QC Forge
Rolled Ring Forging
Ring rolling machines are a specialty forging machine for production of seamless rings, essential for items such as large ring gears and bearing races. A “donut” shape of metal, first formed on a forging press, is placed over a spindle, called a “mandrel”, of the rolling machine, spearing the hole of the “donut”. Rolling dies then press against the donut, squeezing the blank between those rollers and the mandrel while all the elements rotate to spin the blank and shape it into a ring of ever increasing diameter.
High Energy Rate Forging
HERF machines are not in widespread commercial production but serve a niche where forming material at an extremely high speed provides some essential advantage to the end product. These machines resemble a highly modified forging hammer and the item produced is typically formed in a single “shot”.
Plastic Deformation
Deformation of a metal in a “solid state” is, technically, the description of forging. Thus, the specialty operations classified as rolling, extrusion, spinning, cold heading – anything that uses force to strain, provide shearing forces that drive recrystallization of the microstructure and/or change the bulk shape of the material can be considered processes related to, and associated with, forging.