Manufacturing Technology

Met-MAX Innovations – the tool design department of National Machinery LLC – has designed a device that will flip a horizontal part being formed, also referred to as a blank, into a vertical position for further forming.

Opening up numerous possibilities for achieving better net-shape forming, this 90° vertical flip mechanism, called a blank rotator, is able to rotate a horizontal blank to a vertical orientation in the FORMAX® Plus machine. The FORMAX Plus machine’s unique ‘pick-move-place’ transfer uses the built-in lifting motion to pick up the blank from the previous station and place it into the blank rotator mechanism. The actual rotation of the part in the blank rotator utilises one die station to perform the rotation and is synchronised with the kickout motion of the FORMAX Plus machine. Once the blank is rotated into the vertical position, transfer fingers lift the blank out of the blank rotator fingers and deliver the blank to the next forming station. This allows for subsequent cold forming operations that were not possible while the blank was in the horizontal orientation.

The blank rotator is a self-contained unit that simply fits into an existing die bore of the FORMAX Plus die-block. It can be placed in any die station according to the tooling sequence required and can be rotated either up or down according to the sequence requirements. Additional forming steps made possible by the vertical rotation can include: Flattening, coining, piercing and trimming.

The blank rotator with a green blank in the horizontal position, as well as the rotated downward vertical position

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