Doosan Enerbility of Korea placed an order with SMS group for two high-speed open-die forging presses to be installed at a casting and forging plant in Saudi Arabia. The presses will be installed in Tuwaiq Casting & Forging’s new complex to be built near Jubail. Tuwaiq Casting & Forging is a joint venture between three companies: Doosan, Saudi Arabian Industrial Investments Company (Dussur) and Saudi Aramco Development Company. The two open-die forging presses, which feature a push-down design, will be used to forge highly stressed parts for pumps and valves for petrochemical plants, various components for shipbuilding and forgings for wind farms and power stations. They are scheduled to go into operation in the second half of 2024.

The four-column press has a maximum forging force of 40 MN, a maximum upsetting force of 45 MN and can process billets weighing up to 55 tons. The smaller two-column forging press operates with a maximum press force of 20/22.5 MN. The presses

To enable fast forging, both presses are fitted with auxiliary equipment that includes an ingot car for loading the ingots into the railbound manipulator, a table shifting device for faster upsetting, a tool shifting device and a tool magazine. For reproducible forging results, Doosan can pre-calculate pass schedules using ForgeBase software developed by SMS, thus increasing the productivity of the presses. Coupled with a database comprising more than 200 materials, the software calculates the optimum individual forging strategy for any given forging.

The two forging presses are equipped with an online measuring system that captures the workpiece geometry and temperature during the process. This allows the operator to check the actual and target geometry parameters, which is particularly important when forging more complex parts.