Enhancing Part Traceability: Stamping Dates and Part Features Directly on Parts

Have you ever looked at a part and wished you knew which lot it came from? Or have you ever looked at two very similar parts and wished there was something easily identifiable to distinguish between them?

Ideally, the box the parts came in provide that information, but once parts are assembled, tracking can become nearly impossible. In the past, we added proof marks when dies were updated for revision levels, among other changes. However, with this new series of parts, there is now individual date stamping and part features/dimensions stamped directly onto each part for complete lot tracking. Our toolroom built the dies and tooling in-house, designing an efficient method to quickly swap date stamps as needed.

405 / 325 Denotes the different part dimensions – 10 24 Denotes October 2024 Production Date

On previous projects, we added stamped text to denote size and material to help differentiate similar parts. However, this is the first time we’ve included both information about the part size and the date of production stamped on the same part. See some examples of other stamped markings below.