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SFB 708:  3D-Surface Engineering of Tools for Sheet Metal Forming - Manufacturing, Modelling, Machining

Subject Area Materials Science and Engineering
Computer Science, Systems and Electrical Engineering
Mechanical and Industrial Engineering
Term from 2007 to 2015
Project identifier Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 16071898
 
Final Report Year 2016

Final Report Abstract

During forming processes in the automotive and aerospace industry, the productivity of tool systems plays a critical role in the fabrication of car body panels as well as structural elements made of sheet metals. In general, the tools in the medium or large-lot production are large and usually have a complex geometry. These tools have to provide a long service life during the forming of high strength sheet metals. In addition, the formed sheet metal components have to achieve a high dimensional accuracy. The de-velopment and manufacturing of forming tools is a time-consuming and cost-intensive process. Advanc-ing tool wear does not only lead to a significant quality loss of the formed components, but in the worst case also result in a wear-related machine breakdown. Apart from the necessity to exchange the tools, the rework of defectively formed sheet metal parts causes considerable costs. The optimal design of forming tools with regard to their wear resistance and their shape accuracy is of particular importance. Against this background, the Collaborative Research Centre (SFB) 708 has developed a novel manufac-turing methodology for the economical and resource-efficient production of highly wear-resistant surfaces on complex forming tools. The major research objective was placed on novel materials and processes within the field of thermal spraying. These approaches were used to apply hard and wear resistant near-net-shape coatings with a high surface quality and controlled heat input onto the surface of forming tools. To achieve these goals, an efficient path planning and process management for coating with industrial robots were introduced. Moreover, the finishing processes of the coating surface, the tribological behavior of the coated tools during forming, as well as the component’s quality and the spring-back of the sheet metals after forming were investigated. The novel manufacturing method of 3D Surface Engineering, developed by the SFB 708, is characterized by the continuously integrated simulation and virtual modeling of all manufacturing steps. The purpose of the virtual modeling was to optimize and to connect the individual manufacturing techniques (milling, thermal spraying, rolling and grinding) to a process chain, as well as to obtain a simulation-based valida-tion of the forming operation with the corresponding tool. The overall objectives of the novel simulation-aided manufacturing process chain in the SFB 708 were on the one hand, the production of a sophisticat-ed and highly wear-resistant tool to form high-strength sheet metals. On the other hand, a small number of iteration steps and a simultaneous reduction of trial-and-error experiments should be provided during the development stage of the tools. This comprises of a variety of sophisticated questions related to ma-terial engineering, manufacturing, forming, mathematical modeling, simulation and optimization as well as the use of efficient algorithms and data structures. These questions were subjected to the projects in the SFB and were successfully answered by an interdisciplinary cooperation between engineers and meth-odologists from the fields of mechanical engineering, mathematics, computer science and statistics at the TU Dortmund University. Fundamentals in the fields of materials engineering and process-technology were initially developed in the first project phase. At the same time, modelling approaches for the production and application of coatings on forming tools, for the process management and the fin-ishing of the coatings as well as for the forming and spring-back behavior of high-strength sheets were investigated. Major goals of the second project phase were the application of the obtained results in terms of the coating and finishing procedures to tools with more complex surfaces. In addition the process-related influencing factors and disturbances should be analyzed. Based on the simulation and modelling as well as on the knowledge about relevant process parameters and material characteris-tics, an adjustment and optimization of the manufacturing processes could be performed. By means of the novel and innovative SFB 708 process chain, consisting of an efficient offline path planning and pro-cess management as well as a suitable surface finishing concept, a real and complex 3D forming tool could be successfully coated with a near-net-shape and highly wear resistant surface. The tribological behavior of the coated tool in the forming process was analyzed in subsequent experimental tests. Thereby, the suitability, respectively the potential of the approach chosen in the SFB, could be proven. The objectives of the final funding phase included the completion of the 3D-Surface-Engineering method and its application on real 3D-forming tools with free formed geometrics. This included the depo-sition of finely structured near-net-shape coatings with a controlled heat input into the surface, online pro-cess monitoring and the characterization of coatings as well as the finishing of the coated tool surface. The complete illustration and optimization of the process chain was realized by coupling the manufactur-ing processes with analytical methods, simulations and modelling. This also allowed a practicable and substantial transfer of the results to industrial practices.

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