In the industrial manufacturing world metal stamping is one of the leading manufacturing processes for the creation of metal parts. In fact, the metal stamping companies of the US ship over 11 billion dollars of metal stampings, and that’s just domestic. Metal stamping is larger than die casting or even machining for the number of metal parts created and the dollar value of shipped product.
Metal stamping (learn more about the process here) can be used with just about any kind of metal; however, market pressures and engineering concerns mean that in practice there are only a handful of metals that are commonly used in metal stamping, though each metal type has dozens of different grades for different applications.
Stainless Steel and Aluminum Metal Stamping
Two of the most common of that short list of metals used in stamping are stainless steel and aluminum. These two metals surround low carbon steel, which is often considered the base point in metals and exist on opposite ends of the metal stamping spectrum.
Stainless steel metal stampings inherit many incredibly valuable characteristics from the base metal. Stainless steel’s most well-known property is it’s corrosion resistance, which makes it ideal for parts that will be used outdoors or otherwise exposed to the elements or to excessive moisture. Stainless steel is also capable of being burnished to a high shine, and is a very strong metal that is appropriate for parts that will have a great deal of stress on them.
The largest downside of stainless steel is cost: stainless steel is considerably more expensive than the low carbon steel base, and that cost can lead manufacturers to explore other options (such as manufacturing in low carbon steel and then using a secondary coating process to gain weather resistance).
Aluminum metal stampings on the other hand are a very low cost metal. Aluminum is also much-desired because it is extremely light weight, and yet substantially strong. While aluminum stampings don’t have nearly the strength that steel stampings will, aluminum has an incredibly high strength to weight ratio.
Like stainless steel, aluminum can be an attractive metal when burnished to a shine, and satisfies the manufacturing needs for parts that do not require great strength or corrosion resistance. Aluminum is much sought after for it’s low weight for parts needed in lightweight applications.
Most Common
Ultimately the most common metal used in the metal stamping industry is low carbon steel — the base metal that we compare others against. Low carbon steel is the ideal mixture of strength and cost and the vast majority of metal stamped parts are stamped out of low carbon sheet metal. However of the other common metals — including brass, bronze, and copper — aluminum and stainless steel lead the pack as the specialty metals of choice for metal stamping.