Page 42 - MetalForming June 2011

Tooling Technology
Die Designer
Makes Haste, Not Waste
With time being the critical success factor in the world of die design, new features in 3D design software have this Canadian shop shaving days off of lead times, particularly when
developing complex dies featuring cam-trim and restrike stations.
BY BRAD F. KUVIN, EDITOR
Henry Ford once said that “most people get ahead during the time that others waste.”
In that light, consider Tier Two design house Dilast Tool & Die Ltd., in Cambridge, Ontario, Canada, which feeds a steady diet of tooling to the region’s automotive suppliers. The lethal combination of increased stamped-part complexity and shrink- ing lead times has Dilast president and
40 MetalForming/June 2011
www.metalformingmagazine.com
part owner Gerald Claus searching for antidotes. Lead times for new projects are as short as 14 weeks, Claus says, down from 24 weeks just a few years ago. Also, customers often look for early-hit parts from hard tooling and laser trimmed in as little as 7 weeks. Meanwhile, part tolerances that once averaged ±0.040 in. have shrunk to as tight as 0.010 in., particularly for parts assembled via robotic welding.
Dilast developed transfer tools
to stamp this stainless-steel exhaust assem- bly, making
use of the new Target Driven Deformation fea- ture within Visi die-design soft- ware. TDD allowed the firm to quickly over- come formability issues so that within a few hours it could submit the new
geometry back to the customer for air-flow
testing. Designing the assembly, which required a maximum weld gap of 0.5 mm, Dilast input part geometry from CMM results out of the tooling and reverse-engineered new geometry using the TDD feature to alter form steels.
The Dilast 15,000-sq.-ft. die-design and build shop employs 18, including three designers. While it can handle tooling to 180 in. long, the firm’s sweet spot is progressive and transfer tooling 72 to 144 in. long.
“We’re 60 percent progressive, 40 percent transfer,” Claus says, noting a significant increase in the amount of transfer dies coming his way. This is due to increasing part complexity as