Method of detecting faulty parts in a progressive die press

Claim 1

A method of detecting the forming of faulty parts in a progressive die press having a plurality of forming stations, a forming tool and a force transducer at each of said stations, and means for measuring the displacement of said forming tools comprising the steps of: producing a preselected number of sample parts while collecting reference force data from all of said force transducers for a plurality of displacements of said forming tools; providing said reference force data and said displacements to a data processor and, producing and storing a reference force/displacement curve for each of said forming stations; forming production parts while monitoring said force transducers for each of said stations and providing production force data, for each of said forming stations, to said data processor; comparing said production force data to said reference force/displacement curve for each of said displacements, and for each of said forming stations; and indicating a faulty part when said production force data, for at least one of said displacements, is different from said reference force data of said reference force/displacement curve by a preselected difference; setting a plurality of stop flags into said data processor, each of said stop flags defining a parameter to be compared in detecting a faulty part, said parameters including a maximum forming force and a minimum forming force; and comparing the displacement at which the highest forming force occurs during the formation of a production part with the displacement at which said maximum force occurs on said reference force/displacement curve to identify the type of fault which caused said faulty part.

Claim 2

A method of detecting the forming of faulty parts in a progressive die press having a plurality of forming stations, a forming tool and a force transducer at each of said stations, and means for measuring the displacement of said forming tools comprising the steps of: producing a preselected number of sample parts while collecting reference force data from all of said force transducers for a plurality of displacements of said forming tools; providing said reference force data and said displacements to a data processor and, producing and storing a reference force/displacement curve for each of said forming stations; forming production parts while monitoring said force transducers for each of said stations and providing production force data, for each of said forming stations, to said data processor; comparing said production force data to said reference force/displacement curve for each of said displacements, and for each of said forming stations; and indicating a faulty part when said production force data, for at least one of said displacements, is different from said reference force data of said reference force/displacement curve by a preselected difference; setting a plurality of stop flags into said data processor, each of said stop flags defining a parameter to be compared in detecting a faulty part, said parameters including a maximum forming force and a minimum forming force; and comparing the displacement at which the highest forming force occurs during the formation of a production part with the displacement at which said maximum force occurs on said reference force/displacement curve to identify the type of fault which caused said faulty part.