Page 29 - MetalForming June 2016

lubricant program and streamline. We’d like to settle on four or five lubricants that can handle our entire book of busi- ness, and that also will equip us for the future—maybe one lube for alu- minum, one for stainless steel, and one or two for deep-drawing of mild steels and for stamping AHSS.”
An Engineering Approach
Shiloh has been on a mission in recent years, focused on being a “light- weight solutions provider,” Hoschouer says. “That’s leading the company into more AHSS work, and we need to be ready to handle that. DP980 will be a workhorse.”
In 2015 Shiloh experienced a record year for new business, according to reports, adding new customers and new products at a rapid rate. It’s trans- forming itself from a blanking compa- ny into a product-development com- pany, becoming more integrated with customers and vehicle designs. That means a lot of new-product develop- ment—it launched 527 new products in 2015, three times as many as in 2014, and 60 percent of its new sales repre- sent the sale of lightweighting tech- nology. That, and previously noted fac- tors, have Hoschouer and others at Shiloh thinking ahead.
Such forward thinking led Hoschouer, in mid-2015, to spearhead Shiloh’s lubricant-evaluation program, which concludes later this year. The company formed a team of people across multi- ple disciplines to devise a plan that would take into consideration how a shift to new lubricants would impact the company, as well as its Tier One and OEM automotive-industry customers. The plan of action: Take a scientific approach to testing a variety of lubri- cants on multiple workpiece materials on the most challenging of applications.
Hoschouer’s team began by identi- fying the CP-containing lubricants where the company was at risk, and then invited four suppliers to submit potential replacements to handle its most difficult mild-steel deep-draw- ing work, and its challenging AHSS
parts. To conduct its trials, the team enlisted the help of a new tool and test method developed by lubricant man- ufacturer Irmco, Evanston, IL, in part- nership with Bennett Tool & Die, Nashville, TN, and the GE Advanced Mfg. Development Group, Louisville, KY. The tool, dubbed the Irmco iTool, performs controlled and monitored cup-draw testing. Testing follows a methodology based on research con- ducted by Dr. Taylan Altan at the Ohio State University and the Center for Pre-
Over two days of testing, nearly 400 12-in. blanks were deep-drawn; materials tested were 2-mm-thick mild, HSLA and stainless steels, and 1.4-mm DP1180 (an AHSS grade), shown here.
cision Forming, in Columbus, OH. The tool is outfitted to measure and com- pare the frictional forces and defor- mation temperatures exhibited by one lubricant versus another.
iTool in Action
We caught up with Hoschouer and a team from Irmco at Hyson headquar- ters near Cleveland, OH, earlier this year. Hyson’s 300-ton Komatsu servo press was enlisted to put the iTool through its paces on behalf of Shiloh.
The Irmco iTool Consortium
Ten years ago, Dr. Taylan Altan invited lubricant supplier Irmco to participate in his metalforming research at The Ohio State University’s Center for Precision Forming, and then later when he joined the Edison Welding Institute Forming
Center. Dr. Altan’s team was conducting cup-draw tests (CDT) on advanced high-strength steels (AHSS). The
CDT is a practical friction test, and Irmco had
experienced good correlation of its lubricant
performance on difficult draws in the real world. Unlike benchtop friction equipment, the CDT utilizes an actual
press and die.
Irmco envisioned a need for stampers to evaluate
lubricants in a controlled, unbiased manner—without using
their own, valuable production-press time. It also recognized the industry’s need to better understand the capabilities of servo presses, and to gauge how forming in a servo press impacts tooling and part temperature.
After presenting these concepts at Great Designs in Steel, in May 2015, the Irmco iTool Consortium was born. The consortium: GE Louisville’s Advanced Mfg. Development Team, Bennet Tool and Hyson. Shiloh and other metal stampers also have come on board.
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