Laser cutting, metal bending, swaging, and piercing. Although this might seem like four different steps of stainless steel fabrication, aluminium fabrication, and steel fabrication, actually it’s not. These steps require many inventory carts and handlings.

The tube has to make it to the cart from the inventory and wheeled to one workstation to the other one, which neither fast nor efficient as a process. However, it is not the only process that you can go with.

Depending on the dimension and severity of the bends, the intended usage of the tube, complexity of the end form, you might get everything done inside a simple stamping die.

Although stamping may seem like a single process, actually it a collection of multiple processes. This process is used to make metal parts of the raw material and it is definitely a speedy and efficient one.

In special cases, a simple metal part can be fabricated with just one hit with stamping die. But complicated parts may need few more hits. For speeding the entire metal fabrication process, the complex tools like progressive and transfer die removes the hardship needed to move the metal parts from one place to another.

The progressive dies take advantage of the lengthy coil of material to transport throughout the entire process. But the transfer dies use automation to do exactly the same as a progressive die. To function properly, both of progressive and transfer dies require the progressive die press or any transfer press.

A niche transfer die tech is the in-die transfer stamping process, which isn’t as common as the other ones. It is actually a gaining ground that is suitable for any tube application. The process is very much similar to transfer and progressive stamping because it completes multiple steps in one single die.

But there is some noteworthy difference in them that sets them apart.

When a metal part is processed in the progressive die, the part stays attached to the long strip of metal sheets. The designer of stamping die uses it as an advantage because he can know the precise position of the metal part as it goes from one station to another. Then separating the metal finished part of the belt or ribbon is the very last step in the entire process.

In the In-die transfer, the metal part is separated from the sheet material before in the early stage of the process so that the metal part could be manipulated as the part moves along in the die. The designer of the die incorporates this part locating feature inside the die. He also relies on the tooling to position the part

One thing that is worth noticing is In-die transfer isn’t suitable for all applications that come before. Like everything in manufacturing, it is a matter of adjustability and matching, which decides the suitability of In-die transfer to any metal part. According to some experts, bending to less than ninety degrees is the ideal angle for fabricating tube in dies. Beyond that, tubes that do not have the strictest of tolerances is suitable for In-die transfer.