Materials Technology – Flexible profiles are
on a roll
on a roll
New metal-forming process for rapid production of variable
body-in-white components
body-in-white components
Bending sheet metal can be an art. When a wide steel strip has to be shaped into a tube, for example. Or when a top hat section is made for a car body. This occurs thousands of times each day in the auto industry when pieces of sheet metal are shaped into body parts.
Researchers and developers at Daimler have opened up a new chapter in metal forming with their “flexible roll forming,” a technique that propelled them into the final round of the Daimler Research Award 2007 competition. With their innovative process, the engineers can convert super high-strength sheet metal into body-in-white structures with variable lengths, trimmings, and cross-sections. This advance opens up attractive alternatives to the sheet metal stamping process that was previously used.
From flat strip to profile
In roll forming, a sheet of metal is passed through consecutive pairs of rolls in a long machine and thereby gradually shaped into a profile. The process begins with “coils,” which are essentially steel strips coiled into rolls. The material is continuously uncoiled and runs through a zone in the machine in which a great variety of holes with different shapes are punched out as necessary. The steel strip then passes through various pairs of rolls that specialists call “stands”. Each pair of rolls bends the piece a little further in the desired direction until the final shape is achieved. Examples include roof gutters or guard rails.
“Roll forming is actually a very old technique, but it’s one where we’ve found a lot of untapped potential for automotive construction,” says Karl-Heinz Füller, team manager for Metal Forming Technology in the Materials, Manufacturing and Concepts Center at Daimler’s location in Ulm, Germany. In recent years Füller and his colleagues have carried out fundamental research showing that it will be possible to put roll forming to greater use in the auto industry. In the process, the researchers also “discovered” new types of steel that are especially well suited to the process and make it possible to use weight-saving parts.
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