Self-correcting production of roll formed parts for pull-out rails
Funding organsiation:
Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (BMBF)
Description:
Due to increasing customer demands, products and production systems must incorporate more and more functions. This places high demands on the individual components and how they interact, creating great challenges for manufacturers. On the one hand, they must ensure the high quality and precision of the very small parts that they often produce in high quantities. On the other, they must keep manufacturing costs down in order to remain competitive against rivals from Europe and Asia. There is great potential for optimization in forming processes such as press-bending electrical connectors or roll forming furniture guide rails, making it possible to cost-effectively guarantee the precision of the parts and minimize waste. This can be achieved through machinery that autonomously identifies discrepancies in the process and materials and corrects itself accordingly.
Purely mechanical roll forming process suffers from slow, manual process corrections and fluctuating quality of the components. The aim of the research project is to incorporate self-correcting technologies into forming processes such as roll forming by developing methods and hardware components. The focal points are process reliability and machine productivity.
Purely mechanical roll forming process suffers from slow, manual process corrections and fluctuating quality of the components. The aim of the research project is to incorporate self-correcting technologies into forming processes such as roll forming by developing methods and hardware components. The focal points are process reliability and machine productivity.
For this, measuring technique is integrated into previously purely mechanically controlled tools and machines, which detects fluctuations during the production. An intelligent control algorithms for self-correction ensures continuous compliance with the product requirements. It draws on the achievements of the section projects "Self-Optimization", "Intelligent Networking" and "Systems Engineering". The project results will be implemented in near-series prototypes to demonstrate the functionality. In addition, a systematic design is developed to transfer the model to other manufacturing processes.
Through the innovation leap from mechanical to self-correcting forming processes productivity and therefore the resource efficiency of roll forming are significantly increased. Thus process reliability is achieved, which guarantees the sustainable quality of mass-produced articles. The systematic design can be transferred to other production processes. It is supported by engineering and consulting companies throughout the cluster. The project is an important contribution to remain manufacturing in Germany competitive.
