Steel's impact on the weight, performance and integrity of vehicles is significant, and has led to the increased use of lighter steels such as advanced high strength steels (AHSS), with tensile strengths of 1000 MPa and higher. Research shows that AHSS is the fastest-growing material in automotive applications. However, AHSS challenges stampers with greater springback, higher yield strengths, thinner materials and tougher formability. Over the past decade, stampers have gained a knowledge base helping them to deal with these challenges and have applied this to the actual die and stamping process. However, to successfully process AHSS, stampers must look at every aspect of the production line-including press-feeding operations and, in particular, straightening.
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