Happy Forgings Ltd., based in Ludhiana, India, ordered a mechanical forging press from Schuler subsidiary Farina Presse. With a press capacity of more than 6,000 tons, it will be used to produce crankshafts for trucks weighing 3.5 tons and heavier. Happy Forgings is also relying on the precision, rigidity and ease of maintenance of the press to continue producing durable crankshafts in the future.

General Motors (GM) and Samsung SDI plan to invest more than $3 billion to build a new battery-cell manufacturing plant in the United States that is targeted to begin operations in 2026. The plant will have more than 30 GWh of capacity and will bring GM’s total U.S. battery cell capacity to about 160 GWh when it is at full production. The companies plan to jointly operate the facility, and it is projected to have production lines to build nickel-rich prismatic and cylindrical cells.

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.

Nucor placed orders with Sheffield Forgemasters for ultra-large steel rolls for its new plate rolling mill. Sheffield Forgemasters will deliver three rolls weighing 147 metric tons each to Nucor’s Brandenburg Mill near Louisville, Ky., an advanced steel plate mill with the ability to produce 1.2 million tons annually.

Japanese forging company Ohmi Press Works and Forging placed an order with SMS group for a radial-axial ring-rolling machine. It will be Ohmi's sixth ring-rolling machine from SMS group. By expanding capacity at its Shigaraki plant, the company can supply larger and heavier rings for a range of applications in the automotive, shipbuilding, aerospace, mechanical engineering, oil-and-gas and wind-power industries. The machine is capable of rolling seamless rings with diameters up to 4,500 mm (177 inches) and a maximum height of 800 mm (31.5 inches). It is scheduled to go into operation in May 2024.

The Siderforgerossi Group ordered a Schuler counterblow hammer for its Busano Canavese production site near Turin. It will be used there to produce large steel and aluminum forgings for the oil and gas, automotive, mining and aerospace industries. It will replace an old counterblow hammer from Bêché, which is now a Schuler brand, that has been in use for more than 50 years. Commissioning of the new system, which weighs 355 tons, is scheduled for later this year.

Cummins is investing more than $1 billion across its U.S. engine manufacturing network in Indiana, North Carolina and New York. The investment will provide upgrades to those facilities to support the industry’s first fuel-agnostic engine platforms that will run on low-carbon fuels, including natural gas, diesel and eventually hydrogen. Over half of all medium- and heavy-duty trucks on the road in the U.S. today use Cummins engines. This investment is intended to retain the thousands of current engineering and manufacturing jobs and support the creation of hundreds of new jobs across the company’s New York, North Carolina and Indiana footprint.

Jiuli, headquartered in China, awarded SMS group the final acceptance certificate for putting a fully automated forging line into operation. The hydraulic radial forging machine has a press force of 18 MN for each of the four press cylinders, which allows sophisticated materials for the aerospace industry to be forged. In addition, the plant includes two fully synchronized 8-ton forging manipulators and equipment for loading and unloading as well as for cutting, marking and cooling of forged bars. To achieve high process-efficiency levels while at the same time observing the technological parameters required for forging high-temperature materials, the handling manipulators used for automated unloading of heated ingots from the furnace are integrated into the line control system.
 

French manufacturer LISI Aerospace placed an order with Schuler for a 2,100-ton screw press and a 250-ton trimming press for the production of turbine blades. The presses are an integral part of a forging cell that LISI Aerospace commissioned at its production site in Bologne between Nancy and Dijon. The screw press includes a direct drive that transmits torque to the spindle without intermediate links, wear parts or losses and reduces energy requirements. The multi-pole three-phase asynchronous motor is designed for high switching frequency for operation in both directions of rotation, enabling a variably adjustable forging process.