Stamped vs The Other Guys...

[Ubermoose]

In recent AEV ads, in various off-road magazines, there is the tag line: "Stamped Steel is Stronger".
Not having any experience or study regarding steel forming and fabrication I am hoping that someone can explain this statement to me.
First off, the reputation of AEV is such that if they make the claim then I have no problem believing it, I simply wish to understand.
Also, how "tough" and resilient is the front bumper (and rear when it's released). Meaning, can it take a hit or scrape on the rocks and come out dent free?

Thanks for the help.

Love your work Dave and Friends.

Rob

[AEV Dave]

We're actually working on a new page on our site that explains the advantages and disadvantages and why the AEV costs so much more than a fabricated unit.

Real quick to satisfy your question:

Advantages:

design freedom
stamping actually hardens the metal and makes the material itself stronger
Curved large radius shapes are inherently stronger than tight bends joined together with flat sheet metal. This all equates to stronger lighter parts. The AEV is very similar in weight to most fabricated units...but much stronger.
Less labor per part potentially (less welding and grinding)

Disadvantages:

Extremely expensive tools for the relatively low volume of bumpers we produce. Normal stamping volumes exceed 10,000 parts/yr ours unfortunately are no where near that many parts.
Expensive to change tools for design modifications (get the engineering right the first time)


You can pretty much reverse the lists for fabricated steel components.

Fabricated steel is easy to get a product out fast, its cheap to make revisions on the fly, and it requires no expensive tooling. One big issue with it is that it is very labor intensive in terms of welding and grinding which is why all the "volume" manufacturers of fabricated steel bumpers do it in Asia where labor is cheap. The AEV bumpers are made entirely in the USA.

For Videos of the process check out these:

http://forum.aev-conversions.com/showthread.php?t=301

dh