Blanking special steels
Blanking special steel is a technological process that Vito Rimoldi SpA uses to produce mechanical items from raw materials with high technological characteristics. The combined use of dies designed and built for this purpose and of high speed and high precision punching presses allows us to create mechanical items with dimensional accuracy of a few hundredths of a millimetre.
This experience has become our company's heritage through the acquisition of Umberto Ruspi S.r.l. in 2016: this was a historic company based in Milan, founded in 1920, which, in the mid-1950s specialised in the production of blanked mechanical parts for hermetic compressors. In this area it became one of the main protagonists at European level.
What we do with this technology
The special steel blanking technology is used to produce mechanical items, especially reed valves and valve retainers for hermetic compressors. These products must meet particularly stringent requirements as regards the selection of materials and the dimensional accuracy, since they are used in very demanding applications, where reliability and resistance to fatigue are key factors to success.
Our added value
The added value that we can offer thanks to the special steels blanking technology can be summarised as follows:
- Knowledge of materials
- Direct relationship with worldwide market leader steel companies
- Expertise in die manufacture
- Knowledge of the blanking process
- Use of state-of-the-art punching presses
Knowledge of materials
Special steels have very peculiar characteristics and an in-depth knowledge of such characteristics allows blanking them correctly, choosing the best process solutions. In the same way, it is possible to focus on the most critical aspects of processing, anticipating the problems that would otherwise be encountered in the subsequent production stages of the parts.
Expertise in die manufacture
The design and construction of dies is a very delicate phase, given the complexity of the solutions to be implemented. The experience in the design of equipment and the quality of its constructions are critical elements when developing a product, as they are important to ensure the repeatability of what has made them over time (even several million pieces). A die made to perfection requires less investment, reduced maintenance costs and has a longer useful life; it also ensures that the quality of the finished product is perfect.
Knowledge of the blanking process
In-depth knowledge of special steel blanking allows managing the process while controlling the most critical aspects, such as surface defects, the dimensional tolerances, imperfections in the cut that may be dangerous, especially for products that require high resistance to fatigue. The experiences made on different types of materials and geometries reduce the number of problems encountered during the development of new products and their preservation. During the process, the constant monitoring of the blanking parameters becomes of paramount importance, together with the stable cutting strength applied or the preservation of planarity.
Use of state-of-the-art punching presses
To obtain high-quality and repeatable mechanical blanked parts, it is necessary to use technologically advanced punching presses, which allow applying appropriate forces with a balanced distribution of stress and mechanical clearance and shift plane parallelism of a few microns.
