The challenge
Spanish companies are becoming exposed to an increasingly discerning and competitive marketplace. Customers are demanding shorter delivery times and lower prices but at the same level of quality for their parts.
Metalúrgicas Arnal, based in Moncada, Spain, experienced this very situation.
The company specializes in manufacturing equipment and tools for the high-speed rotation of turned and deep-drawn parts. Finished parts are supplied to the lighting sector (lamp accessories) and the supply industry. Although the company sells mainly on the domestic market, it also exports to countries both inside and outside the European Union. It owns several high-speed manual lathes with numerical control.
These lathes shape a range of different materials, such as soft steel, stainless steel, copper, brass and aluminum in thicknesses between 0.5 and 1.5 mm (0.020 and 0.059").
Juan Arnal himself explains, “As competition became increasingly more difficult both nationally and internationally, we were forced to look for a completely new solution, which we finally found in the form of Toolox® steel from SSAB.”
The solution
Before using Toolox® engineering and tool steel, the company used 1.2379 steel for the molds that was hardened to 60 HRC. The processing time for pre-machining and subsequent machining was roughly 12 hours, and in between these two processes the molds required hardening. In addition to a total waiting time of around one week, this scenario generated high manufacturing costs and potential risks due to the heat treatment. For these reasons, the company used other materials such as nitrided F-127 or bronze (400 HB) hardened to 60 HRC, alternatives with considerably lower durability than 1.2379. These solutions produced points on the mold due to surface fatigue that were transferred to the finished parts.
“Since Toolox® requires no heat treatment, the time required for manufacturing a mold has been reduced to only 8 hours, namely to the time for mechanical processing,” explains Arnal.
Antonio López, in charge of automatic turning, says that “in the meantime, we’ve been working with Toolox® molds for more than half a year and they are still exactly the same as on the first day.”
