BLANKING

Blanking is a process of creating a blank out of a whole sheet of metal or from a plate of metal. The process makes use of the punch and dies method to carry out the blanking. The punch and die is used to pierce out the blank from the metal sheet, and the left over metal is the scrap.

A special kind of blanking process is the Fine blanking. The difference here is that a fracture zone is not formed while shearing the blank metal. The entire metal sheet is compressed between two counter-pressure areas, and then the punches on the upper side and lower side remove the blank from the whole set. This gives the entire blanking process a tight tolerance, and does not even require any form of secondary action.

Fine blanking can be done on metals such as brass, aluminium, copper, alloy, carbon and also on stainless steel. Fine blanking is carried out with the specialised presses, which differ from the normal ones due to the addition of some crucial pieces of equipment. A fine blanking press consists of a hard die punch which is the male, and a toughened blanking die whish is the female, plus a guide plate that is similar to the blanking die’s shape. The material is initially brought into contact with the guide plate, and then the stinger impinges the material along its sides. Thus the guide plate holds the material steady while a counter pressure is applied, and the blanking is done in a manner very much like extrusion.

The Blanking process has many advantages, like an exceptional accuracy level, and dimension control system; the part flatness of the metal blank is retained; a finer finish to the edges with a straight structure; the ability to create smaller holes than other materials. The blanking process also requires very less attention to the machine’s details.