Trimming of Advanced High Strength Steels

Modern product design and manufacturing often utilizes a wide variety of materials. Where once low carbon steel predominated, a variety of different materials such as aluminum alloys and advanced high-strength steels (AHSS) are now being utilized. Although such alternative materials may provide a variety of benefits in manufacturing and design, these same materials may present difficulties when subjected to manufacturing processes originally designed for low carbon steel. One such manufacturing area where difficulties may arise is in trimming operations. A defect that may arise directly in the trimming operation are burrs. Burrs decrease the quality and accuracy of stamped parts and cause splits in stretch flanging and hemming. Current standards limit the production of burrs through accurate alignment of the upper and lower edges of the trim knives. The clearance between the shearing edges should be less than 10% of the material thickness. For automotive exterior sheet, this requires a gap less than 0.06mm. Unfortunately, tolerances often exceed the capabilities of many trim dies resulting in the production of burrs. To satisfy the current standards of quality and to meet customer satisfaction, stamped parts frequently need an additional deburring operation, which is often accomplished as a metal-finish operation and conducted manually. The objective of the research described in this paper was to study the mechanisms of burr generation and the impact on AHSS formability in stretch flanging. Results on both the conventional trimming process and a recently developed robust trimming process, which has the potential to expand tolerances of trim die alignment, will be discussed.