Sheet metal manufacturers are under constant and increasing pressure to improve and document quality, while reducing cost. Furthermore, OEMs are shifting responsibility for quality inspections to suppliers, adding extra burdens. Exciting, shapely product designs are placing greater demands on both quality assurance and development departments. The Chevy SSR requires the use of new Grade 5 deep-draw quality steels together with a unique inverted toggle draw process. Deep-drawing and other new advanced forming methods push materials to their limits. There is a new state-of-the-art in stamping quality control for easy, effective and reliable determination of shape, strains and thinning. Full-field optical vision systems based on the wellknown principles of circle grid analysis and photogrammetry, provide automated analysis and quantitative color maps for every square inch of complex parts. The quality results are displayed on a 3D computer model, using the actual measured dimensions of the real part, allowing it to be viewed from any angle. These results show and document the formed shape, the strains from forming, the resultant thinning and a forming limit analysis. The user can place a cursor at any point on the surface, and a corresponding crosshair shows that same point on the forming limit diagram (FLD), together with a detail box showing all of the measured and calculated values. Thus, critical areas can be readily identified and fully quantified so that corrective action can be taken. | 
