Fabrication comes in many forms. Besides the well-known electroplating and thin film deposition, there are metal stampings. Like the other forms of fabrication in shops in Boston, metal stamping uses both base and precious metals to create a required contour or shape. The process cuts and forms the desired shape using a stamping tool. At its most basic, metal stamping takes a sheet of metal and presses it into the specified form using a die and a punch.
Invention of the Stamping Press
Production of metals such as brass was often a slow and often tortuous process. Although brass was a metal shaped, formed and flattened over centuries into desirable objects, it was not until the 18th century that someone addressed and modernized the process. In the 1760s, John Pickering, a London toymaker, invented the stamping press. He patented it in 1769.
Richard Ford took the basic design and utilized shaped dies. The result was the ability to stamp out a vast variety of pots, pans and various dishes. His process allowed the manufacturers or fabricators to stamp them quickly and efficiently out of sheet metal using the dies. These presses or stamping devices possessed one convex and one concave steel dies with one upper and one lower. This forced the sheet metal into a position for forming it in the desired shape.
The stamping machine or press made many more items readily available as mass-produced products. Metal stampings produced metal buttons as well as a variety of fittings for furniture. Since then stamp pressings have resulted in the production of many more items for a vast array of applications. The focus is no longer on brass. Instead metal stampings now utilize many different metals including aluminum, copper and stainless steel.
Applications of Metal Stamping
For many complex industries, metal stamping is a crucial process. It has invaded diverse highly technical and very precise fields including:
Medical: Long run metal or progressive die stamping is the exact tool needed to produce extremely thin metal precision components for various medical devices. This includes surgical instruments
Automotive Industry: Some of the automobile industry’s most important components are the product of metal stampings. The method is usually sheet metal stamping. The products include certain parts of brake system and airbags. This particular method is favored because of its low cost as well as its high rate of production. However, when it comes to metal stamped parts for oxygen and fuel injector sensors, companies rely on metal precision stamping
Aerospace Industry: Metal precision stamping is the mainstay to produce parts for any form of precision instrumentation including gages, landing gear, navigation systems and aircraft engines.
U.S. Military: As for the aerospace industry, precision stamping is essential for the components that make up various forms of transportation, equipment and ammunition types including helicopter gages
Metal Stampings
For preciseness, and to produce complex work, stamping is a basic requirement. It has evolved from a rudimentary device invented in the late 1800s to today’s technologically advanced devices. Yet, the intent remains the same today in Boston and London as it did those centuries before. Metal stampings were to facilitate the production of a variety of materials according to the specifications and expectations of the manufacturers.