Custom Metal Stamping: Finding a Precision-Practicing Partner is Critical

The right contract manufacturer provides the ability to embrace design choices and stand out from competitors with versatile functionality.

Custom metal stamping opens up opportunities for contract manufacturers to provide customized capacity while also providing the scope needed to offer a complete solution — from production to design support and logistical services. Metal stamping, and related products and services, remain essential to many industries including the automotive and consumer product segments. 

Metal stamping involves the use of dies and stamping presses to turn sheet metal into different shapes. Various tool and die surfaces work in conjunction with the presses to shape and shear the raw material into the desired form needed for the product or component and give manufacturers the ability to embrace design choices, stand out from competitors with versatile functionality, and much more.

Today we’ll examine some of the capabilities you should look for when trying to find the contract manufacturer you need to give you the quality and service you need for idealized parts — no matter the complexity. 

Ready to Optimize Your Part Quality? Request a quote today and discover how LMC Industries get your parts program running like clockwork. 

Improve Your Process, and Parts, with Custom Metal Stamping

The right contract manufacturer will meet you where you are in your product lifecycle to solve problems, prevent new ones, refine your results, and deliver on your terms with critical custom metal stamping services. Working with metal components and parts requires precision and quality to meet the rigorous standards of key industries, and keep the costs associated with failure and waste low. In addition to precision and quality, the ideal partner will also provide key assembly techniques, and incorporate the design into the manufacturing process.

Precision Metal Stamping

A strong metal stamping partner will have a proven process and tools in place to remove worry and headaches from the equation. You should look for the following factors when weighing whether a contract manufacturer can deliver the custom metal stamping capabilities they claim:

• Do they optimize designs for manufacturability and work with your team to streamline this process? They should be able to take any problematic stamping project and turn it into a profitable one. 
• What about overall capacity? Do they have the ability to not only turn around small or limited projects but also handle full-scale production runs?
• Are their strict quality control programs in place to ensure the end product meets your requirements? Do they outline and detail their quality assurance tools and protocol? Do they rely solely on technology improvements to ensure quality, or are those tools also backed up by expertise and experience?

Progressive Die Stamping

Progressive die stamping is a metal forming technique that converts a metal strip into a finished (or near-finished) part in several operations performed on a single piece of equipment. A custom metal stamping partner with this capability can deliver several benefits. 

Production speed for complex parts is increased and overall production is faster because of the single-machinery setup. Because the material is continuously fed into the machine and doesn’t require repositioning or transferring to another press during production, the process is accurate and highly repeatable. Progressive die stamping is typically supervised by a single operator and leaves behind minimal scrap, leading to cost efficiency and savings.

In-Die Tapping

This process produces threads on the inside of a drilled hole in a part so that a fastener can be inserted to hold the component in place in the final application. When executed properly, it saves valuable time in your manufacturing process and enhances the repeatability of your parts.

However, some accommodations are needed to ensure the process runs smoothly. Smart tooling design and visual technology verification can ensure the right placement of threaded holes, leading to finished stampings that fit perfectly in your application. Accounting for other details — such as coining the area around where a hole will be tapped to prevent the resulting ‘pucker’ from the process from interfering with the finished part — should also not be overlooked.

In-Die Assembly

Custom metal stamping takes advantage of this process by combining multiple stamped parts together during the actual stamping action — which eliminates the need for secondary processing. 

This means the use of in-die assembly requires only one setup to produce your parts; during production, teams don’t have to stop and load parts from one piece of machinery to another. In-die assembly completes more than one step of production in a single operation, saving time and money. It also brings automation into the process, which both enhances the repeatability of the part or component and reduces the risk of human error in production.

Logistical Support

You should also examine a contract manufacturer’s ability to deliver services beyond stamping. If you require components of another material, say from injection molding or insert molding, can they provide them? Do they offer prototyping services? Do they have other value-added services such as assembly, kitting, warehousing, and shipping? Even though you are looking for custom metal stamping, the ability to consolidate additional services will reduce your overall cost and eliminate potential supply chain pain points.

Need Injection Molding? Here’s What to Look For: Efficiently taking a product from design through production requires a custom injection molder that fits your needs.

LMC Delivers Custom Metal Stamping, Injection Molding, and More 

LMC Industries has more than 70 years of experience in taking complex manufacturing projects and making them simple. In that time, we’ve remained a family-owned business still driven by our core principles of dedication, innovation, service, and manufacturability.

With evolving standards in quality and new breakthroughs in part design, you need a contract manufacturing partner capable of keeping up with the custom metal stamping services you require. 

• Our 86,000-square-foot facility houses 20 stamping presses capable of executing metal stamping, progressive die stamping, in-die tapping, and assembly operations. 
• We feature a tool room, which covers more than 14,000 square feet, dedicated to maintaining stamping dies, and injection molds complete with CNC milling, waterjet machining, wire EDM, conventional EDM, and TIG welding capabilities
• We use Advanced Product Quality Planning (APQP) to vet new products and processes and drive continuous improvement for your parts program. APQP is one of five core quality tools we use to maintain compliance with IATF 16949

Connect with LMC Industries to learn how we help you re-engineer your quality and parts with custom metal stamping and other services.