In the heart of the West Midlands, where the black country’s industrial hum had faded to a whisper, a family business named Bromford Precision was fighting for its life. For three generations, they had stamped simple brackets and washers for the automotive industry. But by 2024, the margins had shrunk to vapour. The owner, Eleanor Bromford, stood on the shop floor, watching a press clunk out a simple cup-shaped component. She knew that if her company was to survive, it had to shrink the metal, not the ambition.
The problem was a client in Coventry: Apex EV , a startup building the next generation of electric vehicle battery housings. These weren’t simple trays. They were complex, monolithic enclosures requiring near-micron precision—deep, seamless cavities that could protect volatile lithium cells from crash impacts and thermal runaway. Apex had tried fabricating the housings by welding multiple stamped pieces together, but the welds were weak points. They needed a single piece of metal, transformed into a shape deeper than its own diameter. deep drawn stamping uk
On the 43rd night, at 2:17 AM, the press cycled. The blank was fed, the punch descended, and the metal flowed. The press opened. A single, flawless battery housing emerged—mirror-smooth inside, uniform wall thickness of 1.8mm, with integrated mounting bosses formed in the same stroke. No welds. No leaks. Just strength. In the heart of the West Midlands, where
Eleanor called in a consultant from the University of Sheffield’s Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (AMRC). The diagnosis was brutal: “You’re treating it like a press shop. You need to think like a metallurgist.” The owner, Eleanor Bromford, stood on the shop
They rebuilt the process from scratch. They introduced a multi-stage drawing cycle: first a shallow pre-draw, then an intermediate redraw, then a final ironing stage to thin and smooth the walls. They replaced standard mineral oil with a high-viscosity chlorinated extreme-pressure lubricant. They even adjusted the blank holder force dynamically using sensors—too little, and the metal wrinkled; too much, and it ruptured.