What is a servo press?

A servo press uses servo motors for precise force and position control during forming operations.

How do I calculate servo press tonnage?

Use our free tonnage calculator at servopress.club/tonnage-calculator.html

Optimizing Speed Profiles for Different Materials

admin

The programmable motion profile is the servo press's greatest advantage. Here's how to optimize it for each material.

## Understanding the Motion Profile

Key zones: approach (fast), pre-contact (slow), forming (controlled), dwell (optional), return (fast). Be fast where speed doesn't matter and slow where it does.

## Mild Steel (SPCC, DC01)
Use moderate forming speed (100-200 mm/s) for blanking. For drawing, slow to 50-80 mm/s at initial contact to prevent wrinkling.

## High-Strength Steel (HSS, AHSS)
Use slower forming speeds (30-60 mm/s) to reduce dynamic impact loads. A short dwell (0.1-0.3s) at BDC helps springback recovery. Avoid high-speed impact — it causes micro-cracking in AHSS grades above 780 MPa.

## Aluminum
Optimal forming speed: 20-50 mm/s for 5xxx series, 30-80 mm/s for 3xxx series. Use pendulum motion for progressive die operations.

## Copper and Brass
Use dwell at BDC (0.2-0.5s) for precision parts. For fine blanking of copper contacts, slow to 5-15 mm/s in the cutting zone.

## Stainless Steel
Use the slowest practical forming speed (20-40 mm/s). Lubrication is critical — use EP (extreme pressure) lubricant.

## Optimization Process

1. Start with manufacturer's recommended profile
2. Run 10 parts, measure dimensions and check surface quality
3. Adjust forming speed ±20% and compare results
4. Add/remove dwell and measure springback
5. Document the optimized profile in the die setup sheet

yuki_rnd

For UHSS above 980 MPa, I'd recommend even slower approach speeds than listed here. Our research showed that reducing contact velocity from 100 mm/s to 50 mm/s on 1180 MPa steel reduced edge cracking by 70%. The cycle time hit is minimal because the slow zone is only 15-20mm of travel.

dave_toolmaker

The material-specific profiles are spot on. One thing I'd add: when you're running a progressive die with mixed operations (blanking + drawing + bending), you need to compromise on the speed profile. I usually optimize for the most critical operation and accept slightly non-optimal speeds for the others.

mike_chen_eng

The point about UHSS contact velocity is critical. We learned this the hard way on a 1.5mm 1180 MPa door ring job.

Another thing worth mentioning: dwell time at BDC matters more than most people realize for high-strength materials. Even 50-100ms of dwell lets the material stress-relieve slightly and reduces springback. On our 980 MPa B-pillar reinforcement, adding 80ms dwell cut springback from 3.2 degrees to 1.1 degrees. That eliminated a restrike operation entirely.

For progressive dies with mixed operations ??we take a different approach than compromising. We use multi-segment profiles where each crank angle range maps to a different velocity. Most modern servo controllers support 8-16 segments. It takes longer to set up but you get near-optimal speed for every station.

What controllers are people using for multi-segment profiles? We are on Komatsu H2W and it handles 12 segments well.