Follow every billet heat, die impression and trimmed forging through to the customer’s gauge.

A forging leaves the press looking finished, yet its quality was decided moments earlier by billet temperature, die lubricant, die wear and the dwell between blows. Those numbers rarely reach the lot record, and the customer’s gauge result arrives weeks later, when the lot is gone.

Production and traceability tracking for precision forging starts at the bar heat and ends at the dispatch label, past the induction coil, the press and the trim die. Each forging then carries its own history.

Bars of 4140 or 8620 steel come in under a heat number. The saw cuts them into billets of fixed weight. An induction coil brings each billet to forging temperature, and an operator places it in the die impression on a hammer or a press. Blocker, finisher and trim steps follow. The flash is cut off at the trim press, the forging is cooled or normalised, and shot blasting removes scale before weight and profile are gauged. Wet magnetic particle testing looks for laps, cracks and seams on parts whose drawing calls for it.

Dies are the heart of the shop. Each die set has a life counted in forgings, a die shop that re-sinks the impressions and a record of weld repairs and nitriding. Parts with a close machining allowance move on to turning or milling, in-house or outside, while the rest are dispatched as forged. A buyer asks for the heat, the die and the test result behind a lot shipped months ago, and answers are pieced together from three registers.