Why do tools have "Drop Forged" stamped on them? What is drop forging?

You see the words "drop forged" stamped on so many tools -- it makes you wonder what the big deal is! Why do manufacturers want you to know that a tool is drop forged?

If you have ever seen a blacksmith beating on a piece of red hot iron with a hammer, you have seen the simplest type of forging. Striking a piece of hot metal with a hammer is forging, and blacksmiths have been doing this for centuries. As blacksmiths experimented with new techniques, they learned that complex shapes could be created by hammering metal into a die. The die contains the shape of the finished product. Modern manufacturers use either a falling hammer or a powered hammer to do the hammering (rather than doing it by hand), and usually use dies on both sides of the piece. This is drop forging.

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Manufacturers now use many different techniques to forge metal. Four of the most common include:

  • Drop forging - Hammering hot metal into dies.
  • Press forging - instead of forcing hot metal into a die with a hammer blow, it is pressed into the die with hydraulic pressure.
  • Roll forging - The hot metal is pressed between two rollers.
  • Cold forging - For smaller pieces, the metal can be pressed into the die without heating it significantly ahead of time.

The reason why manufacturers want you to know that a tool is drop forged is because this tells you something about the strength and durability of the tool. The other two ways to make a tool would be casting it from molten metal or machining it (cutting material away) from a larger block of metal. The advantage of forging is that it improves the strength of the metal by aligning and stretching the grain structure. A forged part will normally be stronger than a casting or a machined piece.

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