Has the widespread use of high-strength steel affected automotive diemaking operations?
Yes. High-strength steels are great from a designer’s perspective, because they combine lighter weight with greater toughness for the most demanding forming and drawing operations that form automotive body panels. But they can be hell on manufacturing operations, which must produce mating parts to very tight gap and flush specifications and on stamping dies and forming tools. Gap and flush dimensions have a huge impact on the appearance of vehicle exteriors, and because they are critical to buyer perceptions of vehicle quality, the specs are exacting. Specifically, gap is the distance between a door edge, for example, and its opening in the body—a few millimeters with a very tight tolerance. Flush refers to the vehicle’s aerodynamically smooth line from the front fender to the rear quarter panel. The difficulty is in predicting work hardening and springback in these high-strength steels. All stamped, drawn, and formed steels work-harden and spring back toward their original shape to so
