In forging industry, the die setup starts with unloading the previous die set and ends with approval of the first part produced. During conventional die setup, forging press is kept idle. The aim of this study is to perform die changing applications of the 1000 ton forging press of Aksan Steel Forging Company in more systematic way to reduce the idle time. The applicability of Single Minute Exchange of Dies (SMED) System and quick die locating methods have been studied. SMED classifies the setup operations as internal and external setup operations. During the internal setup operations the press is kept idle. Therefore it has been tried to reduce the internal setup time. In this study, a new modular die system has been developed. The die system to be used for the forging press with 1000 ton capacity in Aksan Steel Forging Company has been redesigned regarding the dimensional limitations, requirements, SMED System and quick die locating methods. The modules of proposed die system and the dies for a particular forging part have been produced. Tests, observations and time studies have been carried out. The time spent for alignment of the upper and lower dies on the press have been eliminated in the proposed system. The solutions have been proposed for the frequently encountered problems of setup operations of the company and these have been applied in the system. In order to eliminate operator mistakes, marking applications have also been introduced and the application of die cavity revision has been renewed. During the time studies for the case study, it has been seen that the internal setup time of the forging press with 1000 ton capacity has been reduced from 220 minutes to 141 minutes which corresponds to a reduction of 36 %.

This Master thesis deals with design structures of moving bolster for body panel press and with design of railroad tracks, in which the bolster is moving in two mutually perpendicular directions. These moving bolsters are used for facilitating and speeding up the change of pressing dies, which is desirable in automated automotive industry for shortening and streamlining the pressing die change. The part of the work is research of the current state of knowledge in systems for quick die change, design of the moving bolster and its drive, design of railroad tracks, amount of design and control calculations, design of mechanism for lifting the bolster, optimization and strength calculations of bolster in ANSYS software. All the design structures of bolster, railroad tracks and basic workplace layout are processed in 3D software for modelling Autodesk Inventor. Attachments consist of drawing documentation of main assemblies, namely mounting drawing of moving bolster assembly, mounting drawing of railroad tracks assembly, drawing of workplace layout and furthermore drawing of driven shaft, weldment and workpiece of moving bolster and railroad tracks block.