Imagine having to deal with the development of parts that are about 18-ft. long and can weigh 100,000 lb. Clearly not easy. Yet this is the sort of thing that Majestic Industries (majesticind.net) does on an on-going basis. You see, Majestic specializes in progressive dies.

Simply, progressive dies are used to produce parts on a stamping press that require more than one operation: the flat sheet is put in the press, the ram comes down and forms the material in the die, then the material is indexed to a second station within the progressive die, then the ram comes down again.

So in the case of Majestic, they have to make sure that the progressive dies that they produce for customers are capable of manufacturing the stamped shapes that they are ultimately interested in getting. So as they construct these massive dies, they have to run tests—which means putting the die sets in a stamping press and seeing what is produced. The parts would be measured on a CMM. Chances are, it is likely that after the first test, they need to modify the die, which means taking it out, machining the surface, making any other adjustments, loading it into the machine, and then trying it again.

There is another aspect to all of this, which is called “springback.” That is, even though a piece of sheet metal may be formed in a press with literally tons of pressure, there is a tendency for the metal to want to go back to a state like that it had been before it was stamped. So making the measurements and adjustments is even trickier.

According to Mike Reed, quality manager at Majestic, “Depending on the part, there could be five to eight iterations before we get it just right.” Although this is a big part, they’re taking real care, because if you have a die and you machine off too much material, then there would be a real problem. As Reed explained, “We would make conservative adjustments to make sure we were always cutting ‘metal safe.’” Which is good from the point of view of not having a serious problem with the die, but which added to the processing time.

So to speed the process, they invested in a 3D scanning system. It consists of two hand-held devices from Leica Geosystems (leica-geosystems.us/en/index.htm), the T-Scan scanner and the T-Probe probe. Also, they’re using PolyWorks software from InnovMetrics (innovmetric.com/polyworks/3D-scanners/home.aspx?lang=en).

The result: They’re cutting die tryout times in half. Here’s how it goes. The die is put in the press and cycled. The first-off samples are then laser scanned with the hand-held Leica T-Scan. This feeds up to 20,000 points per second into the PolyWorks/Inspector package. The software then crates a comparison of the as-measured part to the CAD data for the part as-designed, including a color-coded scheme that permits seeing where there are deviations. “It is almost instantaneous feedback on the quality of the part. I scan it and tell the designers exactly what is going on,” said Reed. He added, “With PolyWorks V11 there is a Morphing tool that allows us to predict and adjust for springback of the stamping, and that is how we are reducing the number of die tryout iterations.”

About the Morphing tool, Reed explained that once a part has been scanned and the polygonal model is generated and compared with the CAD model, “With the Morphing tool, I lock in the points on the scan data that I don’t want to move. Then I select points in the areas that I want to adjust in the CAD model, and PolyWorks automatically matches them to their corresponding points on the scanned parts. Finally, I set the compensation percentage, and PolyWorks does all of the calculations for me, compensates the auto-match points, and creates a new mesh for the CAD model.”

All of which helps Majestic cut the number of tryouts and modifications in half, and gets their customers progressive dies more quickly.