The precision forging developed very fast in recent years due to the development of the automobile industry in China. Several actual examples are given to show this development and the direction of the precision forging in China should move forward is pointed out.

The amount of production orders from Japanese car and construction machine industries have slightly increased in 2002, but the costs of the forged parts have decreased due to severe competitions with the other Asian countries. Most of the forging industries and some universities are making more efforts for technological researches and developments to meet the demand for higher accuracy and higher quality products, shortening of delivery time, and development of forged parts for new industrial fields. Some helical gears of which surfaces can be net-shaped have been started for commercial base production to be shipped to car industries. Some non-graphite lubricants for hot forging and some conversion coating free lubricants for cold forging have been developed to improve some environmental problems.

A behavior of interface of cold forging tool coated by hard film is analyzed by FEM. The indentation of a hemispherical tool of SUJ2 in JIS coated by electroplated coating of chromium into a cylindrical workpiece of S25C in JIS is performed. The proposed constitutive equations are implemented by the non-linear springs model at the interface. Calculated results show that the maximum interfacial normal displacement is observed at an immediately forward from the lip of the indentation, whereas maximum interfacial tangential displacement is at the immediately backward of the lip of the indentation.

The forming limits are studied for cold upsetting of high strength aluminium alloy in the present paper. Different geometry ratio and frictional conditions are investigated in the forgeability test to evaluate the forming limits and also to obtain the various strain paths. The critical fracture value can be obtained by integrating along the strain path till free surface crack initiation. To predict the damage evolution of cold upsetting, the computer-aided evaluation of forming limits is obtained by using the finite-element software DEFORM-3D and the modified Cockcroft-Latham criterion. The predicted theoretical limit strains agree quite well with the experimental results.

Since the dimension of cold forged part is larger than the cavity size of forging die, the difference results from the various features, such as, the elastic characteristics of die and workpiece, thermal influences, and machine-elasticity. All of these factors should be considered to get more accurate prediction of the dimension of forged part. In this paper, severe FE techniques are proposed to improve the prediction accuracy of dimension for cold forged part. To validate the importance of the above mentioned factors, and the estimated results are compared with the experimental results. The used model is a closed die upsetting of cylindrical billet. The calculated dimensions are well coincided with .the measured values based on the proposed techniques. The proposed techniques have put two simple but important points into Fe simulation. One is the separation of forging stages into 3 steps, from a loading through punch retraction to ejecting stage. The other is the dimensional change, according to the temperature changes due to the deformation. The FE analysis could predict the dimension of cold forged part within the $10{\mu}m$, based on the more realistic consideration.

Friction in cold forging with mist lubrication is measured with the ring compression test. Small quantity of mist lubricant is sprayed onto the surfaces of cemented tungsten carbide (WC) tools polished to mirror surfaces, and the specimens of pure aluminum are compressed. It is found that spraying small quantity of lubricant $(0.5\;g/m^2)$ is effective to reduce the friction in comparison with the dry condition. The mist particles stick to the tool surface as separated dots, and the behavior of the trapped mist lubricant between the tool and specimen during upsetting is discussed.

Due to the strength and biocompatibility requirement, the stainless steel SUS 316L is widely used for trauma internal fixation device. SUS 316L can be hardened and strengthened only by cold work. In this work, the material compression test is performed both in laboratory and computer simulation by a FEM analysis software DEFORM to correlate the hardness to strain. This data is then used for preform design and predict the hardness of the finish bone plate forging. Finally, we compared the hardness between the actual forging and computer analysis results. Although the predicted hardness from computer simulation. is 55HV higher than the final forging sample, we can get good compatibility on the hardening tendency of cold forging.

The aim of this paper is to illustrate which factors influence the martensite grain fineness made by subsequently surface carburizing of extruded component. The effects of surface decarburizing by annealing, residual stress, initial microstructure and crystal oriental made by forward extrusion were taken into account. The available evidence suggests that the residual stress inside crystal or the crystal orientation is the main factor that results coarse martensite while cold extruded component was treated by carburizing.

Prediction of final microstructures after high temperature forming of Ti-6Al-4V alloy was attempted in this study. Using two typical microstructures, i.e., equiaxed and $Widmanst\ddot{a}tten$ microstructures, compression test was carried out up to the strain level of 0.6 at various temperatures $(700\~1100^{\circ}C)$ and strain rates $(10^{-4}\~10^2/s)$. From the flow stress-strain data, parameters such as strain rate sensitivity (m) and activation energy (Q) were calculated and used to establish constitutive equations for both microstructures. Then, finite element analysis was performed to predict the final microstructure of the deformed body, which was well accorded with the experimental results.

Grain size of the $\alpha$ phase is computed during isothermal forging of the TC6 aerofoil blade, by combining FE with the Yada's model of grain size. The present results illustrate the grain size and distribution of the $\alpha$ phase during isothermal forging of the TC6 aerofoil blade' in detail. The computed results show that height reduction, deformation temperature, hammer velocity and friction have significant effect on distribution of the equivalent strain, and that height reduction, deformation temperature and hammer velocity have more significant effect on grain size of the $\alpha$ phase than friction between billet and die.

Internal defects such as chevron crack occasionally occur in the process of cold extrusion or cold drawing. It is known that the existence and property of inclusion greatly influences the generation of the internal crack. However, in the plastic working field, research about the effect of the inclusion on the fracture is not theoretically analyzed. This paper describes effects of the physical property of inclusion on the internal fracture generation in the process. Prediction of fracture was evaluated by critical damage value calculated by the equation of Cockcroft & Latham and its change by the inclusion physical property such as size and stiffness was investigated.

Many researches have been already done on the issues of high temperature deformation and the microstructural evolution. The information has been very useful for the plasticity industry, especially successful for the extrusion. However, the parts made with forging usually have a complex shape. It is difficult to control the distribution of the variables like strain, strain rate and temperature rise due to the working heat during a hot-forging process. Consequently, the microstructural variation could be occurred depending on the plastic deformation history that the forged part would get during a hot forging. In the present study, the microstructural characteristic of a hot-forged 6061 aluminum alloy has been discussed on the aspect of grain size evolution. A forging of 6061 aluminum alloy has been carried out for a complex shape with a dimensional variation. Also, finite element analysis has been done to understand how the deformation variables such as strain, strain rate give an influence on the microstructure of a hot forged aluminum product.

The precision cold forging of helical gear for steering pinion has been studied. Because of the large helix angle, there are many difficult problems to control the material flow and part dimension. The die shape was proposed to improve the flow of workpiece. In order to improve the dimensional accuracy of forged part, a FE analysis was performed. The proposed die shape drives to flow amicably workpiece. The applied load was reduced up to 10 percent, compared to the conventional-shaped-die. The elastic deformation of die has been investigated quantitatively by the 3-dimensional FE analysis. The die-land has been expanded up to $10{\mu}m$ on loading stage, based on the FEM results. Therefore, the elastic deformation amounts should be taken into consideration to improve the dimensional accuracy of forged helical gear.

Forged gears have the obvious advantages with the greater utilisation of raw material and high productivity over the machined gears. The forged bevel gear has been used in differential gear for automotive with a high reliance. On the other hand, the studies have been continued to improve the accuracy and expand the applying areas. In this paper, a whole manufacturing process for forged gear from die design and cold forging to heat-treatment was introduced. The stress and elastic deformation for forging die have been analysed by the 3D-FEM-package. The real elastic deformation of die was measured by the strain-gages. The elastic deformation of die was reached to 1mm, in terms of the present study. The analysed quantitative dimension of die was taken into consideration into the CAD/CAM data for forging die.

The cold precision forging of spur gears has been researched, and the effects of relief-hole shape and forging process on the spur gears forming has been analyzed. The results present that the forging load decreases when a suitability diameter of relief-hole is chosen, but the function is not obvious. The spur gears precision forging method with an adjustable movement of concave mould can benefit both the top and the bottom comers forming of the spur gears, full fill the tooth cavity, and decrease the forging load.

Recently many kinds of gears have been produced by forging in order to enhance the mechanical properties of the gears and the productivity of the process. Developments in forging technology are the reason for the increased usage. However, a critical problem of the forged gears is the dimensional change or distortion caused by elastic recovery after forging, and relief of the residual stresses during subsequent heat treatments. Distortion is of great concern to the manufacturers of precision parts, because it influences directly the dimensional accuracy and the grade of carburized bevel gears. In the present paper, distortion due to cold forging and heat treatment of bevel gears is investigated. Distortions of forged gears, machined gears and die are measured and compared. Numerical analysis is used to simulate the complete cold forging process and heat treatment process for the machined gears and shows good agreement with the experimental measurements.

This research represents enhancement of forgeability of SNCM522H steel. Output Shaft (OP Shaft) has been used as a subject for the study. OP Shaft is used as component of power train for automobiles. To develop I pass cold forging process instead of existing 2 pass process for OP Shaft, studies in terms of process design and heat treatment were performed. To verify the new process, CAE simulations were performed. And hardness test, microstructural analysis and tensile tests after heat treatment were carried out to evaluate the validity of proposed heat treatment cycle. The 2 pass forging process could be reduced as 1 pass process through improvement of process and heat treatment cycle.

Airbag is important part for ensuring the driver and passenger's safety. The generator parts are typical parts difficult to be formed. BRIMET developed precision forming technologies for these parts and the technology has been applied in batch production. The parts produced by these technologies have been installed in some domestic trade mark cars. The technologies all have applied for patent.

Forging machinery traditionally gives an impression of heavy, greasy, noisy and approximate equipment. Recent demands from markets, especially automobile, have made machine designers to reconsider their concept. It is also noted that more advanced technologies in other industries, such as electronics and IT, have become accessible. Naturally these technologies were first applied in highly sophisticated fields for additional performance or features with extra expense. Drastic cost reduction in last decade changes this picture. They provide not only performance and functions but also a chance in reducing costs. Powerful servomotors, accurate sensors and fast processor satisfy performance, precision and machine control requirement. Control by wires replaces traditional mechanical linkage. Additional features such as factory automation will come almost free.

In recent years, the production value of Taiwanese mold and die industries have reached to a high peak in 1998, in amount of NT 604 hundred million dollars. But in recent years production value are going down year by year, till year of 2001 the production value have down to NT 394 hundred million dollars. Its main reason might be the major product were following in medium and low price category, the high accuracy and high cost mold and die still rely on import aboard. Therefore how to made the related technical database system on various field to provide the industry user to promote industries competition ability in mold and die is really urgent matter at this moment. In this research, we will offer how to apply the Visual Basic program language to edit a set of more perfect database system of mold and die material selection. At the present time, we have constructed complete Knowledge-Base-System of intelligence for forging mold and die material, the most related data from the existed data, the others are through our additional experimental results. By using this system by the user can got the related and need data easily, we hope it will reduce designing time and cost for mold and die.

Although cross rolling process has many advantages in forging a joint shaft, an automotive component of front axle unit, subsequent process is necessary to straighten its bending during forging process. In this paper the bending minimization of the joint shaft was studied to eliminate such an additional process. First of all, a characteristic diagram was used to find out factors affecting the bending of the shaft. Also design of experiments was utilized for estimating the influence of those factors. It was found that the phase angle, which is the difference in starting positions between upper and lower dies, was important to minimize the bending of joint shaft and die cooling is necessary to diminish the distribution of bending.

This paper presents the development of a virtual forging factory framework. The technologies of virtual reality and relational database had been integrated in the developed framework using Microsoft $Windows^{(R)}$ programming as the main technique so as to emulate a physical forging factory. The developed virtual forging factory consists of forging cells and a forging cell is comprised of forging machine, forging die, and forging operations forming a forging production line. The technology of virtual reality had been successfully adopted in the production simulation of manufacturing such as CNC and robotics. However, the application in virtual forging factory seems to have not been studied yet. Potential application of a virtual forging factory can be beneficial to (1) computer aided instruction, (2) shorten the learning curve of a novice, (3) remote diagnosis and monitoring when remote monitoring and control technology and signal inspection is considered, (4) improve adverse forging environment when remote forging technology is applied, and (5) virtual reality application.

A high strength aluminum alloy bolt (A7050, T7 temper treatment) has been developed by the authors. The bolt has a small grain size in the whole area of the bolt because of the large equivalent strain followed by thermo-mechanical treatment. As the bolt made of A 7050 has a risk of stress corrosion cracking, each grain should be strengthened the grain inside than the grain boundary in order to improve the stress corrosion cracking resistance. It has been confirmed that the nano-indentation hardness at each grain inside increased with the increasing equivalent strain by thermo-mechanical treatment processing.

This article mainly introduces the research of closed forging on 20MN hot die forging presses. After transforming of the equipments, optimizing of die design and improving of die-manufacturing precision, gear blanks used in car gearbox have been forged out without fins successfully.

In this paper presented the net forging technology of planetary gear after much experiment and analysis, technology of two forging processes after billet being one -time heated, and cold net forging was adopted to ensure the gear forming quality. In the process of die producing, electrical rod NC cutting technology was used .the test and application has proved the net forging gear has reached higher quality and met the requirement of design. The net forging gear technology had been put into production.

In this study, to show well favorable characteristics of warm forged material, we compared and analyzed microstructure and mechanical properties of general hot-forged material which finished heat treatment with warm-forged material which was produced by control cooling condition. Along with this, we suggested better direction of control cooling condition to be able to remove heat treatment process while satisfying mechanical properties.

In this paper, a new preform design method is proposed to eliminate the excessive flash in metal forging process. After carrying out finite element simulation of the process with an initial billet, backward particle tracing is performed from the outlet of the flash. Then, the region which belongs to the flash is easily found .. The process is analyzed again with the redesigned billet which is removed that region the above mentioned region. The optimal preform shape which minimizes the amount of flash without changing the forgibility can be obtained in several iterations.

In the study, the modeling strategies in connection with the quantitative prediction and improvement of product accuracy and quality are proposed. The analysis models are composed of process chain, geometry of die, interface conditions between die and workpiece, material parameters, forming velocity of machine, and so on. A 3D simulation platform, around the software MSC. Superforge, is built up for the applications in net-shape forming parts. Some results for bevel gear are shown to demonstrate the efficiency of the modeling system.

A typical die-set for enclosed-die forging of half axle gears in double action hydraulic press is presented, the important factors those influence on precision forming of half axle gears are analyzed, warm forming process of half axle gears is simulated by FEM software $DEFORM\_3D$. The results show, that proper die structure and dimension, suitable web thickness and position can improve material filling, ensure full filling of tooth cavity.

Extrusion of forward-gear and backward-rod by combined extrusion with controlling the extrusion velocity using a counter tool is studied. In the combined forward-backward extrusion with controlling extrusion velocity, only parts with short gear can be formed. To obtain longer gear parts, extrusion with reverse ram motion is carried out after the combined forward-backward extrusion process. In this method, combined forward-backward extrusion is carried out until excessive extrusion length is attained and then, the motion of the punch is stopped and the counter tool is moved in the inverse direction and returned to the position for obtaining the desired extrusion length. The experiment is carried out by using lead for billets as a model material. With reverse ram motion, longer gear teeth without under-filling defect can be formed than that by only combined extrusion with controlling extrusion velocity.

In combined forward-backward extrusion with controlled forward speed by a counter punch, accurate parts with forward rod can be formed. As an extension of this method, reverse extrusion is proposed, in which the extruded forward rod is pushed back while the main punch is kept at the final position after the forward-backward extrusion process. The experiment is carried out using lead as a model material. With the reverse extrusion method, longer forward rods can be formed without under-filling defect than that by combined extrusion with controlling extrusion speed.

Microforming technology becomes crucial in variety of industries as up-to-date machinery products and parts are miniaturized Therefore research on micro forming processes are actively conducted because of its high productivity, high precision and efficienct material usage. Since friction during microforming has greater influence than macroforming, hydrostatic pressing is much more efficient. In this paper minimization of bur during fine sheet shear forming and hydrostatic process of multi-filament extrusion to obtain fine wire of micro-order have been conducted.

Tool life in cold forging is influenced by tool quality as well as forging conditions and quality of forging material. This paper presents some typical examples of tool life improvement in aspect of tool quality depending on tool design and tool manufacturing parameters. For the purpose of improving tool life, suggestions should be based on accurate understanding of tool operating conditions in cold forging process. FE simulation known as CAE is effective in order to make clear the conditions by some numerically calculated result.

The objective of our study is to investigate the micro fabric ability by conventional metal forming processes. In the present investigation, micro hole punching was studied. We tried to control punching process at the micro level and scaled down the standard blanking condition for $25{\mu}m$ hole fabrication. To accommodate this, tungsten carbide tooling sets and micro punching press were carefully designed and assembled meeting accuracy requirements for $25{\mu}m$ hole punching. With our developments, 100, 50, and $25{\mu}m$ holes were successfully made on metal foils such as brass and stainless steel of 100, 50, and $25{\mu}m$ in thickness, respectively, and hole sizes and shapes were measured and analyzed to investigate fabrication accuracy. Shear behavior during micro punching was also discussed. Our study showed that the conventional punching process could produce high quality holes down to $25{\mu}m$.

The Electro-thermal Explosion Coating (EEC) technique is a new surface treatment technology emerged in recent years. It uses an electrical discharge (with very high voltage from 5 to 30 kV or more) to produce a pulse current with large density inside the material to be deposited, the metal wire undergo the heating, melting, vaporization, ionization and explosion processes in a very short time (from tens ns to several hundreds ${\mu}s$), and the melted droplets shoot at the substrate with a very high velocity (3000 - 4500 m/s), so that the coating materials can be deposited on the surface of the substrate. Coatings with nano-size grains or ultra- fine grains can be formed because of rapid solidification (cooling rate up to $10^6-10^9\;k/s$). Surface of the substrate (about $1-5{\mu}m$ in depth) can be melted rapidly and coatings with very high bonding strength can be obtained.

In order to restrain the local necking during stretching of sheet metals, the combined stretching processes with simultaneous compression are proposed. The combined stretching tests with two types of compression to top of the cup were carried out using the pure aluminum sheets; (1) stroke control loading process and (2) pinpoint loading process. It was clarified that the metal flow in the cross-section of the cup is affected significantly both by the magnitude of load and the stroke in the compression process. It was also found that the local necking can be restrained effectively by the metal flow from center of the cup and therefore the forming limit is improved.

The multi-action forging process is one of developing directions of forging technologies. In this study, the multi-action die is designed and developed by the screws mechanism and the forging simulation is conducted by using plasticine to investigate the optimum conditions for the design of the screws. The results show the design variables are optimum when the diameter is 30 mm and the screw angle is $60^{\circ}$ for the upper screw rod and the outer diameter is 60 mm and the screw angle is $23.4^{\circ}$ for the lower screw tube. It makes the relative velocity between the upper punch and the die to be two to one, which is the expected condition. The material flow of the plasticine forgings is uniform. Therefore, it is feasible to use the screw set as the multi-action mechanism for controlling the movement of the multi-action forging die set.

This paper is focused on a compound forging technology of the blower blade and the process flow in the production of the blade. It shows this compound technology is reliable and economical for the production of big blades.