Cairo University

Faculty of Engineering
Mining, Petroleum and Metallurgy Department
4th Year Metallurgy

Plastic Metal Forming of

Metals and
Powders
LECTURE 3
By Dr. Ahmed Hatem Al-Khoribi
• Forging
• The process of applying compressive forces to a
work piece to deform it, and create a desired
geometric change to the material.
• It is a compressive process performing between
a set of opposing dies.

• It is similar to extrusion from mechanical point

of view where both processes depend on the
application of compressive forces.
Figure shows forging process.
• The forging process is very important in metal
manufacturing industry, particularly in the iron and
steel manufacturing industry. A steel forge is often
a source of great output and productivity.
Aluminum, magnesium, copper, titanium, and
nickel alloys are also commonly forged metals.
• Work stock (coming from cast shop) is input to the
forge. The forge will then manufacture forgings of
desired geometry and specific material properties.
These material properties are often greatly
improved.

• Metal forgings can be small parts or weigh as much

as 300 kg.
• Products made by forging include:

1. Aircraft parts such as landing gear and shafts

for jet engines and turbines.
2. Structural components for transportation
equipment such as automobiles, railroads,
crankshafts, levers, gears, and connecting
rods.
3. Hand tools such as rivets, screws, and bolts.
• General advantages of forging process:
1. Metal forging can strengthen the material by
sealing cracks and closing empty spaces within
the metal.
2. The hot forging process will highly reduce or
eliminate inclusions in the forged part by
breaking up impurities and redistributing their
material throughout the metal work.
3. Forging a metal will also improve the metal's
grain structure by reducing grain size (hot
forging) and orienting grains (cold forging)
leading to greatly increasing ductility or
strength of forged parts.
• Note: It is important to control the impurities
in the metal during the casting process since
the impurities (inclusions) can act as stress
raisers and cause stress concentrations during
metal forming.
• The following figure shows steps of forging.

1 2 3
• Most metal forging operations are carried out hot,
due to the need to produce large amounts of
plastic deformation in the part and the advantage
of an increased ductility and reduced strength of
the work material.
• Hot forging also eliminates the problem of strain
hardening the metal.
• In cases where it is desirable to create a favorable
strain hardening of the part, cold forging may be
employed.
• Cold forging, while requiring higher forces, will
also produce greater surface finish and
dimensional accuracy than hot forging. Some
specific metal forging processes are always
performed cold, such as coining.
• Forging can be classified according to the degree the
material flow:
1. Open die forging: In which the work is compressed
between two dies that do not constrain the metal
during the process.
2. Impression die forging: In which cavities within the
dies restrict metal flow during the compression of the
part causing the material to deform into a desired
geometric shape. Some material in impression die
forging is not constrained by the cavities and flows
outward from the dies. This metal is called flash. In
industrial metal forging, a subsequent trimming
operation will be performed to remove the flash.
3. Flashless forging: In which the entire work piece is
contained within the dies in such a way that no metal
can flow out of the dies cavity during the compression
of the part. Thus no flash is produced.
• Open die forging
• It is the most basic type of forging which has
been practiced for the past 10000 years.
• Types of open die forging include
blacksmithing, upsetting, cogging, and
fullering.
• Blacksmithing is an open die forging process
where the hammer and anvil surfaces serve as
opposing flat dies.
• In upsetting (upset forging), the work is placed
between two flat dies and its height is decreased
by compressive forces exerted between the two
die. Since the volume of a metal will remain
constant throughout its deformation, a reduction
in height will be accompanied by an increase in
width.
• However, friction forces that present at the die-
work interface oppose the spreading of the
material near the surfaces while the material in
the center can expand more easily. The result is
to create a barrel shape to the part. This effect is
called barreling. Barreling is undesirable and can
be controlled by the use of lubrication.
• The following figure shows barreling during
upsetting process.
• Cogging is an open die forging process in which flat
dies are employed to compress a work piece reducing
its thickness and increasing its length. Cogging is the
successive deformation of a bar along its length.
• In a cogging operation, the forging is large relative to
the size of the dies. The part is forged in a series of
steps. After each compression of the material, the
open dies advance along the length of the work piece
and perform another forging compression. The
distance the dies travel forward on the work piece
between each forging step is called the bite, and is
usually about 40 to 75 percent of the width of the dies.
• A greater reduction in the thickness of the forged part
can be accomplished by decreasing the width of the
bite. Cogging allows for smaller machinery with less
power and forces to form work of great length.
• The following figure shows steps of cogging.
• Fullering is mostly used as an earlier step to help
distribute the material of the work in preparation for
further metal forging operations. This often occurs
when a manufacturing process requires several
forging operations.

• In fullering, open dies with convex surfaces are used

to deform the work piece. The result is to cause metal
to flow transversely along both sides.
• The following figure shows fullering.
• Impression die forging
• Impression die forging manufacture involves
compression of a work piece by the use of
impression dies (mold) that contain cavities that
act to restrict the flow of metal within the dies
during the deformation of the work. The metal
will fill the space within the dies cavity as it is
plastically compressed into the mold. Closing of
the mold completes the deformation, hence
impression die forging is also referred to as
closed die forging. The forged metal part will
now have the geometric dimensions of the mold.
• One characteristic of impression die forging is the
formation of flash or fin around the forged part.
Flash is trimmed afterwards.
• The following figure shows impression die
forging .
• Flashless forging
• It is a type of precision forging process in
which the entire volume of the work metal is
contained within the dies and no material is
allowed to escape during the operation. Since
no material can leave the mold as the part is
forged, no flash is formed.