Footprint Tools, a manufacturer of traditional hand tools in the United Kingdom, is at the heart of a research project that could see Sheffield spark a recycling revolution in industrial forging that unlocks a step-change in the manufacture of safety-critical components for the aerospace, defense and energy industries using machining waste and linear hammer technology.

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.

Forged Solutions Group Inc. (FSG), a provider of complex, precision forged rings and closed-die products to aerospace and defense customers, acquired Steel Industries Inc. Headquartered in Redford, Mich., Steel Industries is a vertically integrated manufacturer of open-die forgings and seamless rolled rings for the aerospace, defense, space and industrial markets. Since 1913, Steel Industries has forged components for the most demanding end-use applications. Steel Industries offers forging, heat-treating, machining and finishing services.

Perryman Company, a titanium producer based in Houston, Pa., placed an order with SMS group for the supply of two forging machines. The order includes a 40/45 MN high-speed open-die forging press in the pull-down design and an SMX 500/15 MN hydraulic radial forging machine with two forging manipulators. Perryman also ordered a production control system for the entire forging line. The open-die forging press will be used to forge cast titanium billets to the required size so that, in the next step, they can be finish-forged in the radial forging machine to produce bars (round, square or flat) up to a maximum length of 550 inches (14,000 mm).

The quality of the flow curves used in numerical simulation plays a decisive role in the selection of suitable forming technology, as well as the pricing of forged products.

Automation within forges and heat-treating facilities often consists of individually controlled processes for individual pieces of equipment, such as furnace heating or press operation cycles. Individual processes can be controlled at a Level I protocol. Full cell automation consolidates these automated steps and implements a central Level II control system, which is designed using a combination of Windows services and model-view-controller (MVC) architecture.

Ovako Steel’s 2018 investment in a vacuum tank degassing (VTD) facility is a critical development for the Smedjebacken mill. Removal of hydrogen by a state-of-the-art vacuum process now enables Ovako to address the needs of forgers that require high-performance, reliable and cost-effective steel for demanding applications such as those in the automotive industry.

In Part 1 of this article, I drew on the notion of time travel from the 1985 movie Back to the Future to explore the accuracy of predictions made in my article from the August 2012 issue of FORGE. Without the fictional flux capacitor, which enabled time travel in the DeLorean time machine used in the movie, we will continue this analysis of the predictions regarding AM prototyping and forging and AM short-run production and forging.

Additive manufacturing (AM) has rapidly evolved since its inception, and investment in AM technology has flourished in both the public and private sectors. This article, the first of two parts, evaluates predictions made in FORGE in 2012 and illustrates some appropriate applications that could affect (or already have affected) forging processes and markets.