Tooling department : a company within the company
The tooling department receives CAE drawings from the design office. Based on these, it creates machining programmes for each part of the tools. In fact several tool assemblies are required to make your forged parts :
Inserts
These inserts are mounted directly on our drop hammers. This is the part in which your part is forged. In most cases, there are cavities corresponding to the intermediate and final states of the forging.
Trimming tooling or punches
we use this part of the tooling to cut off the flash (the part of the material remaining around the part after forging).
Specific tools
Machining fixtures
Inspection gauge
Bending tool
Marking die…
FORGINAL medical also manufactures its own insert holders, tool carriers and weights in-house. The tooling department, in partnership with the maintenance department, maintains production equipment in optimum condition
Steps in tool production
- Preparation of the machining programmes
- Distribution of the blocks of raw materials to each machining centre (one machining programme can last up to 30 hours)
- Testing of the machined subassemblies
- Assembly of the tooling
- Forging and trimming validation trials
Planning
- The quality of the tools is checked after each forging run to ensure that production is carried out under perfect conditions.
- No production without tooling! The first step in the scheduling starts in the tooling department. The tools must be supplied on time to ensure the manufacturing schedule runs smoothly.
Tooling Department equipment and production facilities
- 2 HSM (high-speed machining) centres for maximum precision in the manufacture of tooling
- 1 3-axis centre (max. load 700 kg) for the in-house manufacture of custom forging tooling, particularly adapted to small production runs
- 1 FANUC wire erosion machine for all our trimming punches
- 1 3-axis centre for our punch bases, trimmer bases and various minor machining operations
- Various additional turning, milling, piercing and spark erosion machines
Tooling team
This is made up of 7 people. They all have machining qualifications and at least 10 years’ professional experience in this field.