ABSTRACT
Parts are made from sheet metal in two fundamentally different ways. The first way involves the manufacture of dedicated dies which are used to shear pieces of required external shape, called blanks, from metal stock that is in strip form. The strip stock may be in discrete lengths that have been cut from purchased sheets or may be purchased as long lengths supplied in coil form. With this method of manufacture, dies are also used to change the shape of the blanks, by stretching, compressing, or bending, and to add additional features through piercing operations. The dies are mounted on vertical presses into which the sheet metal stock may be manually loaded or automatically fed from coil.
