If you’re at all like me, you wonder which articles get the most attention on our website. Every year we publish around 25 feature articles, and at the end of the year we gather statistics to see which ones get the most page views. So, without further ado, here are the five most-viewed articles on www.forgemag.com based on page views. This ranking applies only to articles published in 2020.

The Forging Industry Association (FIA) announced that Forge Fair 2021, North America’s largest forging industry trade show, will be rescheduled to October 26-28, 2021. It was originally scheduled for May 18-20, 2021. The general logistics, schedule and location of Forge Fair 2021 will remain the same. The three-day trade show will take place at the TCF Center in Detroit, Michigan. Detroit Marriott Renaissance Center is the host hotel and will provide discounted room rates to Forge Fair attendees.

Construction work on the new SMS group Campus in Mönchengladbach, Germany, started with a recent groundbreaking ceremony. The site will be home to a new technology, service and digitalization center built on SMS premises. Starting in 2023, the competencies of five locations in the region will be brought together at this central location in the Rhineland. With its new campus, SMS will be able to exploit the full catalyst effect from the growth areas of service and digitalization to expand its role as a technology provider.

Germany’s SMS group acquired Italian companies Hydromec S.R.L. and OMAV S.p.A. to further expand its product range in the forging-press and extrusion-plant markets. Hydromec manufactures forging presses and ring-rolling mills, and OMAV supplies aluminum extrusion lines. With its extended product portfolio, SMS group is now able to supply complete extrusion lines and forging plants with all upstream and downstream equipment and process technology from a single source. The two new SMS group companies, located in Brescia, will continue to operate on the market under their own names as subsidiaries of SMS. 

When it comes to forging research, it turns out that size really does matter. The bigger the press, the lower the chance of using it for experimentation and the higher the costs associated with the research.

Andritz received an order from Allegro, a subsidiary of Evraz and RailService established to produce train wheels in Russia, for a complete production line for train wheels. The production process includes several stages. Blanks produced by Evraz are heated to 2282°F (1250°C) in a rotary-hearth furnace, then descaled and pre-formed in a hydraulic press with 10,000 tons of press force. The blanks are then rolled in a wheel-rolling machine developed by Schuler and forged into a finished product in a crimping and piercing press with 5,000 tons of press force. This is followed by a geometric test in a laser measuring system and permanent marking in a marking press. Finally, the wheels undergo heat treatment, and the running surfaces are hardened.

It is a well-known fact that too many recordable safety incidents will result in the good people from OSHA showing up to hang around and ask a lot of questions. Nobody wants to get hurt on the job. Everyone at the facility has some other place to be once their shift is over, and many employees have family waiting for them. With that being said, why would people continue to operate poorly maintained manufacturing equipment and material-handling machinery? 

A fire set by an arsonist severely damaged the production halls at Mühlhoff Umformtechnik’s plant in Uedem, Germany, at the border with the Netherlands. Among the damaged components were four large presses. Six months after the fire, the company, which manufactures complex components for the automotive industry, is ready to restart some of its production with the help of Schuler Service. Schuler has already repaired two of the four damaged presses, and a new 2,000-ton press with ServoDirect technology from the TSD series is scheduled to go into operation in early 2021.

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the forging landscape –seemingly overnight. With many in the industry initially expecting the impact to last a matter of weeks, most forgers are now preparing for a much longer recovery period that will likely last into early 2021.

In the manufacturing world, many people use technology readiness as a means of describing the journey within the valley of death, the gap between proof of concept and first use in the operational environment.