Great article on hot stamping by Mike Austin of Diversified Tooling Group, It concisely covers the challenges associated with hot forming and shows why it is so much more complex than conventional cold stamping. Problems from friction appear differently in hot stamping- because there is a different root cause, there is a different corrective action. Free flow of metal into the cavity minimizes friction, but the critical cooling rate is difficult to achieve uniformly across the part without intimate contact with water cooled dies.

Read more about the complexities of hot stamping at TheFabricator.com.

-Danny Schaeffler, www.EQSgroup.com and www.Learning4M.com