One way to be more profitable in the tool and die and stamping business is to get longer life from your tooling. Another way is to make your customers more profitable, which eventually reflects positively on your bottom line. One company has done both.

Vanguard Tool & Mfg. Co. Inc., Rancho Cucamonga, Calif., is a unique company. Although its owner, Robert Scudder, considers it a stamping house, it started off as a stamping and tool and die company. One of its first customers was a paper convertor that wanted Vanguard to produce fasteners used for file folders--the type that hold two-hole punched paper. Scudder felt that along with tool and die and stamping, it would be wise to have his own product, and these fasteners fit the bill.

Over the years, Vanguard has specialized in this business and now has more than 100 customers and 38 employees in six buildings covering approximately 75,000 sq. ft. During this time, Scudder was persuaded to work closely with his customers to engineer new file folder fasteners.

A unique product,br> Mike Hacker, plant supervisor at Vanguard, mentions that the company had a customer that was unsatisfied with the equipment it was using to assemble its fasteners to file folders and asked Vanguard to develop specialized assembly equipment. Being a tool and die company with experience building tooling and equipment, Hacker says Scudder looked at the available equipment and felt Vanguard could engineer and build a superior product, which it did. This opened up a new business for the company. "It took off like wildfire," Hacker says. "Our equipment goes above and beyond anything that the other companies build."

Now, the company manufactures hanging folder rods, base compressor fasteners, embedded flat-prong fasteners, duo-pronged fasteners and bonded fasteners that have a paper backing that’s bonded to a folder using glue. To top it off, Vanguard rents its fastener assembly machines.

In fact, file folders have recently had a resurgence in demand, mentions Hacker. One reason for this, he says, is the escalating price of steel. Customers are buying the fasteners and storing them because of price increases.

Hacker says the company has also developed and patented a unique folder rod that cuts the amount of steel used by 50 percent. The concept was engineered and developed jointly with one of the company’s largest clients to save costs because of the ever-rising steel prices. With this unique file folder rod, the company now has a patented product that only it makes, and the product is helping generate more profits for Vanguard’s customers.

Production in the millions
Producing millions of these fasteners on a daily basis has the company using approximately 160,000 lbs. of steel every day. This kind of stamping is hard on the tooling. Most of the tooling is made from tool steels and solid carbide. Hacker says that the company was experiencing problems with some of its form dies.

"We developed a die for our folder rods that were experiencing breakdowns in the different radii," he mentions. "We tried different forms along the way and different types of polishes and steel to take care of the problem. But we were still having difficulties with the breakdown of the tool form."

Another problem that needed solving was chipping on a punch when it pulled away from a sharp corner. Over time, the chipping would no longer allow the punch to produce a sharp corner.

While in Minnesota visiting one of Vanguard’s customers, Scudder was reading an FFJournal article (July/Aug. 2005, "How to extend tooling life") about how a coating process from Phygen Coatings Inc., Minneapolis, helped LuK USA LLC experience greater stamping tool life. A light bulb went on, and Scudder talked to Hacker about trying the Phygen process on some of the problematic components of their dies.

The success was immediate. "We went from 14 million to 16 million hits per punch to double that [amount] with the Phygen coating over tool steels," says Jerry Smalling, tool and die maker at Vanguard. "We haven’t tried it on our carbide forms yet, but we will."

FortiPhy process
According to Phygen, its CrN (Chromium Nitride) FortiPhy process provides a unique combination of coating properties by creating a thin, dense, non-columnar coating structure that has a high adhesion level to virtually any substrate material. The microstructure of the coating is controlled by precise process parameters, and the FortiPhy coating constitutes an exceptionally thin, single-phase, stoichiometric, nanocrystalline, highly textured, dense structure that maintains the critical dimensions of the coated tool or component.

Unlike hot-processed chemical vapor deposition (CVD) coatings, which combine with carbon molecules from the substrate to form a hard layer, FortiPhy CrN is a chemically complete coating, applied to a surface using a special high-adhesion process.

"Typical CVD coatings are applied above 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit to increase diffusional activity within the substrate," says Dave Bell, president of Phygen. "During the CVD coating process, carbon atoms move to the surface and combine with the coating material to form a third compound. This can produce a hard coating, but with drawbacks. Only some of the substrate’s carbon is available to migrate to the surface, and it can only travel a short distance. This means that as tools and coatings wear, the second application of a CVD coating usually lasts about 70 percent as long as the first application. A third application generally has a life of only 30 percent of the original tool. The free carbon molecules are all used up after that. When no more carbon can be leached to the surface, the process ceases to provide any benefits."

A key benefit of FortiPhy’s nanocrystalline microstructure is its low coefficient of friction (COF), mentions Bell. FortiPhy CrN has a COF of less than 0.1 under properly lubricated conditions in an oxidizing environment. This is one benefit that has helped Vanguard’s tooling, especially when it’s used for sharp radii of a punch and die.

To add the Phygen coating, Vanguard builds its forms undersized by 0.0002 in. to 0.0003 in. to allow the coating to build the form back up to its nominal size. "It’s not as hard as some of the other coatings I’ve seen, but it has lubricity properties to give it long life," Hacker says. "We don’t have much of an issue with heat with our tooling, but if you cut down on the friction, with the lubricity, it will keep the heat down."

Vanguard’s tool forms are designed to be resurfaced even with the Phygen coating applied. Once a tool form becomes worn, the company wire-EDMs the tools and then sends them back to Phygen for recoating. This can be done many times before having to produce new ones. By using this process, Hacker mentions that they get much longer tool life.

"On a sharp corner punch in the tooling, after about 1.2 million hits, we would have to pull it out and resharpen the punch," Hacker adds. "Often, we would have to remove it three or four times because the punch would chip. Now, with the Phygen coating, I can have a full run and not have any issues because of the coating’s lubricity."

An important benefit of the Phygen coating is the ability to keep a job running, as well as dramatically reduce downtime. "With the Phygen coating, we can eliminate a lot of downtime," he says. "I can put this coating on and keep the die running its full run, often about two months. Every time I have to pull the tooling out, we lose money, so the Phygen coating allows us to keep it running. When we factor in a die change due to premature tool wear against the coating cost, it helps justify using it."

Smalling adds, "We tried titanium nitride, and the Phygen coating was superior. The titanium nitride just flaked off while the Phygen, after millions of hits, eventually just wore away."

Hacker says that Vanguard produces about 10 to 20 different products. A high volume for the company could easily constitute a production of 2 million to 4 million pieces in one day, while the lowest production of a part would be from 100,000 to 200,000 pieces. Some products are produced at 700 strokes per minute.

With all of these products running at high volumes, Hacker mentions that die changes might only happen every couple months on a press, unless there are problems with the tooling. Hacker and Smalling both check the dies daily. Also, during stamping there are certain features on the products that the production supervisors check to make sure the tooling is still sharp and producing quality parts.

"There are times I put a die in, and it runs for two months," Hacker says. "Our average changeover for dies is about two to three per week. We build a quality tool; when we put the dies in the press, it stays there unless there’s a problem with the tool chipping or abnormal wear.

Material that’s used for many of the products is 0.012-in.-thick steel. Some products are powder coated on the ends. It’s stamped and powder-coated using a nylon powder in an inline process that Vanguard developed. The companies average press is 45 tons (approximately 21 presses), with some that go up to 60 tons. Most products are progressively stamped with two parts out per stroke." FFJ