Metal Forming Processes

Course instructor: Ali Tariq

 Introduction
▪ Practically all metals, which are not used in cast form are
reduced to some standard shapes for subsequent processing.
▪ Manufacturing companies producing metals, supply metals
in form of ingots which are obtained by casting liquid metal
into a square cross section.
▪ Slab (500-1800 mm wide and 50-300 mm thick)
▪ Billets (40 to 150 sq mm)
▪ Blooms (150 to 400 sq mm)
▪ Sometimes continuous casting methods are also used to
cast the liquid metal into slabs, billets or blooms.
▪ These shapes are further processed through hot rolling,
forging or extrusion, to produce materials in standard form
such as plates, sheets, rods, tubes and structural sections.
Sequence of operations for
obtaining different shapes
Primary Metal Forming Processes

■ Rolling
■ Forging
■ Extrusion
■ Tube and wire drawing
■ Deep drawing
■ Although Punching and Blanking operations are
not metal forming processes however these will be
covered due to similarity with deep drawing
process.
Rolling
Change in grains structure in rolling
 Salient points about rolling
■ Rolling is the most extensively used metal forming
process and its share is roughly 90%
■ The material to be rolled is drawn by means of
friction into the two revolving roll gap
■ The compressive forces applied by the rolls reduce the
thickness of the material or changes its cross sectional
area
■ The geometry of the product depend on the contour
of the roll gap
■ Roll materials are cast iron, cast steel and forged steel
because of high strength and wear resistance
requirements
■ Hot rolls are generally rough so that they can bite the
work, and cold rolls are ground and polished for good
■ In rolling the crystals get elongated in the rolling direction. In cold
rolling, crystals more or less retain the elongated shape but in hot
rolling they start reforming after coming out from the deformation
zone
■ The peripheral velocity of rolls at entry exceeds that of the
strip, which is dragged in if the interface friction is high
enough.
■ In the deformation zone the thickness of the strip gets reduce
and it elongates. This increases the linear speed of the strip at
the exit.
■ Thus, there exist a neutral point where roll speed and strip
speeds are equal. At this point the direction of the friction
reverses.
■ Roll torque, power etc. increase with increase in roll work
 Pressure during
rolling
► Typical pressure variation along the
contact length in flat rolling. The peak
pressure is located at the neutral point.
The area beneath the curve, represents
roll force.

Friction in rolling: It depends on lubrication,

work material and also on the temperature. In
cold rolling the value of coefficient of friction
is around 0.1 and in warm working it is
around 0.2. In hot rolling it is around 0.4. In
hot rolling sticking friction condition is also
seen and then friction coefficient is observed
up to 0.7. In sticking the hot wok surface
adheres to roll and thus the central part of the
strip undergoes with a severe deformation.
Roll passes to get a 12 mm rod from 100 x
100 mm billet
Roll configurations in rolling mills
■ Two-high and three-high mills are generally
used for initial and intermediate passes during
hot rolling, while four-high and cluster mills
are used for final passes.
■ Last two arrangements are preferred for cold
rolling because roll in these configurations are
supported by back-up rolls which minimize
the deflections and produce better tolerances.
Various Roll Configurations (a) Two-high (b) Three-high
(c) Four-high (d) Cluster mill (e) Tandem mill

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Other deformation processes related to rolling
 Forging
■ Forging is perhaps oldest metal working process and was
known even during prehistoric days when metallic tools
were made by heating and hammering.
■ Forging is basically involves plastic deformation of
material between two dies to achieve desired
configuration. Depending upon complexity of the part
forging is carried out as open die forging and closed die
forging.
■ In open die forging, the metal is compressed by repeated
blows by a mechanical hammer and shape is manipulated
manually.
■ In closed die forging, the desired configuration is
■ On squeezing the die cavity gets completely filled and excess
material comes out around the periphery of the die as flash
which is later trimmed.
■ Press forging and drop forging are two popular methods in
closed die forging.
■ In press forging the metal is squeezed slowly by a hydraulic or
mechanical press and component is produced in a single closing
of die, hence the dimensional accuracy is much better than drop
forging.
■ Drop forging is a process that uses a pair of impression dies and a
heavy hammer to form and compress metal bars or billets into
complex shapes.
■ Both open and closed die forging processes are carried out in hot
as well as in cold state.
■ In forging favorable grain orientation of metal is obtained
Open and closed die forging
Grain orientation in
forging

Forging Machining

back
Barreling in forging
when the metal billet starts to form a barrel shape as
it's being compressed in an open die forging process.

Flash less forging or

precision forging
 Extrusion
■ It is a relatively new process and its commercial
exploitation started early in the nineteenth century
with the extrusion of lead pipes. Extrusion of steels
became possible only after 1930 when extrusion
chambers could be designed to withstand high
temperature and pressure.
■ In extrusion, the material is compressed in a chamber
and the deformed material is forced to flow through
the die. The die opening corresponds to the cross
section of the required product.
■ It is basically a hot working process, however, for softer
materials cold extrusion is also performed.
 Direct and Indirect Extrusion
▪ In direct extrusion metal flows in the
same direction as that of the ram.
Because of the relative motion between
the heated billet and the chamber walls,
friction is severe and is reduced by using
molten glass as a lubricant in case of
steels at higher temperatures. At lower
temperatures, oils with graphite powder
is used for lubrication.
▪ In indirect extrusion process metal flows
in the opposite direction of the ram. It
is more efficient since it reduces friction
losses considerably. The process,
however, is not used extensively because
it restricts the length of the extruded
component.
 Impact Extrusion

It is similar to indirect
extrusion. Here the punch
descends rapidly on to the
blank which gets indirectly
extruded on to the punch
and to give a tubular
section. The length of the
tube formed is controlled
by the amount of metal in
the slug or by the blank
thickness. Collapsible tubes
are extruded by this
method.
 Hydrostatic Extrusion
In this process, the billet in the
container is extruded through a die by
a liquid pressure medium instead of by
the direct acting forces with a ram.

In this process the friction between

container wall and billet is eliminated,
however, this process has got limited
applications in industry due to
specialized equipment & tooling and
low production rate due to high set
up time.
 Drawing
■ Large quantities of wires, rods,
tubes and other sections are
produced by drawing process
which is basically a cold working
process. In this process the
material is pulled through a die
in order to reduce it to the
desired shape and size.
■ In a typical wire drawing
operation, one end of the wire is
reduced and passed through the
opening of the die, gripped and
pulled to reduce its diameter.
■ By successive drawing operation through dies of
reducing diameter the wire can be reduced to a very
small diameter.
■ Annealing before each drawing operation permits
large area reduction.
■ Tungsten Carbide dies are used for drawing hard
wires, and diamond dies is used for fine wires.
 Tube
drawing

• Tube drawing is also similar to wire drawing, except that a mandrel

of appropriate diameter is required to form the internal hole.
• Here two arrangements are shown in figure (a) with a floating plug
and (b) with a moving mandrel
• The process reduces the diameter and thickness of the tube.
 Deep Drawing

The starting point is typically a disk or blank

that gets deformed to take on a cup or
bowl shape. If the depth of that bowl is
greater than the radius of the initial blank –
meaning the metal has been deformed a
long way – the process is called deep
drawing.
 Deep Drawing
■ This operation is
extensively used to for
making cylindrical
shaped parts such as cups,
shells, etc from sheet
metal.
■ As the blank is drawn
into the die cavity
compressive stress is set
up around the flange and
it tends to wrinkle or
buckle the flange.
Deformation of workpiece during
punch travel

Back
 Defects in
drawing

(a)Wrinkling in the flange or (b) in the wall (c) tearing,

(d) earing, (e) surface scratches
 Punching and Blanking
▪ Punching and blanking operations
are not metal forming operations
but are discussed together with
metal forming because of their
similarity with deep drawing
operation.
▪ Objective of punching and blanking
is to remove material from the sheet
metal by causing rupture, the punch
and die corners are not provided
with the any radius.
▪ Tool steel is the most common
material for tool and die. Carbides
are also used when high production
is needed.
Comparison of metal forming processes
Defects in Rolling
Defects in forging
Defects in extrusion

• Surface cracking
• piping
• Internal cracking