After Deep Drawing: Metal Finishing For Your Product

When you contact a deep drawn stamping manufacturer, understanding metal stamping capabilities are very important. But what might be equally important to you is the metal finishing that your product needs. Production doesn’t end after stamping. There are many ways to finish a product before it goes out the door. Many manufacturers in the deep drawn stamping industry offer some type of finishing, more commonly known as secondary operations. 

Metal Work

Although manufactures may not offer all of the secondary operations that are possible, there’s usually a few available to you. First, material removal is required after the part has been deep drawn. Thereafter, a finishing style is applied. Here is a list of some secondary operations you might be looking for:

  • Anodizing: Process used to increase the thickness of the natural oxide layer on metal surfaces.
  • Assembling: Process of joining pieces together by welding, binding, riveting, fastening or bending.
  • CNC Machining: Process that uses computer numerical control.
  • Coining : Process that uses a great deal of force to plastically deform a piece.
  • Dip brazing: Process of joining two pieces of metal simultaneously with a third.
  • Embossing: Process for producing raised or sunken designs or relief in sheet metal.
  • Extruding: Process used to create objects of a fixed cross-sectional profile.
  • Forming: Process of fashioning metal parts and objects through mechanical deformation, reshaping the metal part with adding or removing material.
  • Heat Treating: Process used to alter the physical properties of materials.
  • Heliarc Welding: Process that uses helium and tungsten electrodes (TIG) to create an arc across two materials.
  • Iriditing: Inexpensive process that coats aluminum in a hard protective oxidized layer to prevent rust.
  • Nickel and Chrome Plating: Process that can be done only over brass and copper alloys to cover and protect the product.
  • Patining (wet & powder): Process of adding a coating over the metal object which could include: high performance powder coating that lasts longer than normal paint and dramatically reduces corrosion and wear, electrostatically applied lacquer.
  • Polishing: Method of removing oxide and dust from the metal, which then produces the nice smooth surface.
  • Shearing: Processes also known as blanking or piercing where a punch and die is used to modify the workpiece.
  • Spinning: Process by which a disc or tube of metal is rotated at a high speed and formed into an axially symmetric part.
  • Spot welding: Process in which contacting metal surfaces are joined by the heat obtained from resistance to electric current.
  • Swedging: Process of bending or shaping cold metal.
  • Trimming: Process where excess metal that is necessary to draw the part is cut away from the finished part.

Whether you are familiar with all of these secondary metal finishing options for metal parts or not, that’s quite a list! A lot goes into not only producing metal pieces through the deep drawn process but also the metal finishing of each piece, to make them just right for your specific application needs. Need more information or have questions about metal finishing, get in touch with us today!