Abstract:
The thesis focused on improvements to the manufacturing process of the body section of a discharge
check valve used in the automotive industry. The process begins with the cutting of a 42 mm
diameter steel rod (JIS Grade SIO) into billets with a length between 26.60 to 27.90 mm.The billets
are then sent out to drill a 19.9 mm diameter hole, followed by annealing, shot blasting and
bonderizing. The body was then formed by a two step forging process and finished by a machining
operation. It was found that the drilling and machining steps create 35.32% material loss, which is
excessive. Therefore, it is the aim of this research is to reduce the material by 10%. New forging
steps were introduced to replace the drilling process. The influence of the die radius (2, 4, 6 and 8
mm) on the material flow, stress and forging force was studied using commercial finite element
software (DEFORM 3D). The results of the simulations showed that using a die with an 8 mm
radius with a two step forging, required a higher forging force than the current design. However,the
generated stress and the contact pressure were reduced. A forging die was made using the new
design and experimental forgings were produced. It was found that a two steps forging process
could not be applied successfully, as the punch in the first forging step failed due to overload.
Therefore, a third forging step was introduced to reduce the forging force. The three-step forging
process has the benefits of eliminating the outsourced drilling operation and reducing the material
loss from 35.32% to 22.3%, at the cost of one additional forging step.