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Hammering parts with hydroforming
Conventional hydroforming uses a continuously increasing pressure to form the part. Another process, hammering, relies on a hydraulic system that alternates between a programmed high pressure and low pressure.
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Planning 101: Hydroforming automation
Developing an automated cell of any sort requires detailed planning,and hydroforming is no exception. All elements, from tube debundling to scrap removal, are like pieces of a puzzle—and if any one of them is missing or doesn’t fit, the entire...
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Keeping hydroforming competitive
ASTM A513 (Standard Specification for Electric-Resistance-Welded Carbon and Alloy Steel Mechanical Tubing) is a conventional specification that governs tube for many uses, and hydroformers have been relying on tube made to this standard for many...
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One pipe or two?
The energy sector is hot right now, and so is pipe production. Finding the optimum material for making pipe for this industry is tricky. Low-alloy carbon steels tend to be strong, but lack corrosion resistance. Stainless steels resist corrosion...
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Forming a new approach
Attendees of the fifth Hydroforming Conference and Exhibition, organized by the Tube & Pipe Association, International, and the Society of Manufacturing Engineers, learned that hydroforming technology is not dead yet.
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Achieving aluminum's mass at steel's cost
Tube traditionally is produced with a constant wall thickness, leaving design engineers stuck with designing tubular parts and unable to optimize them. A tube with variable wall thickness changes all that. This technology allows design engineers...
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The evolution of tube hydroforming
More than a decade ago, tube hydroforming grew in two directions: low-pressure hydroforming (a patented process) and high-pressure hydroforming. Since then the industry has grown to include all manner of robots, laser cutting systems, punching...
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Liquid curves
Sheet hydroforming has fewer restrictions when forming complicated parts, which gives styling designers and manufacturing engineersmore flexibility during the design process. To provide a stylish body shape for the Pontiac Solstice®, GM chose...
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Straining to understand bending?
Before you can hydroform tube, you bend it. Then it springs back. You can compensate by overbending it, but first you have to predict the amount of springback.
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The evolution of tube hydroforming
The growth in hydroforming use has slowed as tube hydroformers, particularly in the automotive industry, are taking a step back to examine process options in an effort to determine the most efficient, cost-effective process. Some even have...
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Warm forming magnesium, aluminum tubes
Research shows that in forming lightweight materials such as aluminum and magnesium alloys, the formability increases as the temperature increases, especially in the range from 200 degrees C to 300 degrees C (392 degrees F to 572 degrees F).1-5...
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Introduction to Tube Hydroforming
Under the right circumstances, hydroforming can be a viable, cost-effective manufacturing process. Tube hydroforming often produces stronger structural components than can be achieved with more conventional methods. This article explains tube...
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Tube hydroforming for expanded design options
Hydroforming has become a favored technology for automotive parts because it allows manufacturers to increase a component's strength, reduce its weight, and reduce the number of parts in an assembly. Another important benefit, one that is often...
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A new use for hydraulic presses
The use of high-strength steels (HSS) and ultrahigh-strength steels (UHSS) has made stamping complex structural automotive components increasingly difficult and capital-intensive. Changing from traditional stamping (at room temperature on a...
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Processes for hydroforming sheet metal
Part three of a three-part series on sheet hydroforming, this article reviews the SHF-P and SHF-D processes.
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The heat is off
To make a complex heat exchanger shell, a company produces a prototype model using the hydroforming process, analyzing fatigue, thinning, and cycle times to decide if the process will prove to be cost-effective.
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Tube Hydroforming Design Flexibility—Part IX:
In this article Gary Morphy reviews high-pressure and pressure sequence hydroforming and discusses factors to consider when deciding which process is best for a particular application. The decision should be based in part on anticipating future...
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Tube Hydroforming Design Flexibility—Part VIII: Dimensional Stability
Whether they are producing automobiles or hydroforming press parts, designers, manufacturers, and assembly personnel are very concerned about dimensional stability. Surfaces and holes must be located in a specified range and smaller is better....
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Tube Hydroforming Design Flexibility—Part VII: Holes
When making holes in hydroformed parts, fabricators have many choices—milling, drilling, laser cutting, plasma cutting, flow drilling, post-piercing, and hydropiercing.
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Forming advanced metals
The demand for lightweight components continues to be a primary driver in the automotive industry.
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Tube Hydroforming Design Flexibility—Part VI
Tube hydroforming reshapes a tube from a normally round cross section to a desired shape. The final shape, usually rectangular, develops along the part length. The cross-sectional periphery may be consistent throughout the part and equal to the...
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Hydroforming tapered engineered tubes
Hydroforming often results in localized thinning. Using engineered tubesÂ--tubes that have a thicker wall where the tube is most prone to thinning--Âcan result in a stronger finished component.
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Part feature developments in hydroforming products
Tube hydroforming technology continues to develop in ways that improve part utility, economy, or process robustness. Auto parts that have recently been produced by hydroforming include roof rails, radiator enclosures, a front-end structural...
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Developments in hydroforming
Commentary from the people interviewed at the International Conference on Hydroforming (Oct. 2003) indicate that trends include an increasing interest in forming aluminum and other lightweight materials; more use of tailored tubes; and that sheet...
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Tube Hydroforming Design Flexibility—Part V
Combined with the information in Part III of this series that focused on cross-section expansion before hydroforming, this article discusses the most common options used in preparing tube for hydroforming and achieving the designer-intended part....
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Hydroforming heats up
Hydroforming was one of the fastest-growing metal forming technologies during the 1990s. Most of U.S. industry cooled down during and after the recession of 2001, but things have been heating up lately, and the world of hydroforming is no...
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Tube Hydroforming Design Flexibility—Part IV
Material selection is a very important aspect of design flexibility when striving to fulfill part functionality requirements. Choosing the correct material is fundamental to making the part effectively and efficiently.
The way a material is...
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A survey of presses for hydroforming tubes, extrusions
Hydroforming is one of the most important fields in production manufacturing. In recent years many single presses, groups of presses, and entire production plants for internal high-pressure (IHP) hydroforming of tubes and extrusions have been...
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Eliminating final trim shearing of hydroformed tube
The most common way to establish tube length after hydroforming is by cutting or shearing the tube to a specified dimension; however, cutting out this step can reduce scrap. A new method designed to eliminate this step combines forming the end of...
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Making the most of hydroforming
Hydroforming has become a competitive metal forming method and has succeeded in many applications because of its weight- and cost-saving attributes, elimination of joining operations, and ability to offer part design for confined spaces.
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Tier 1 supplier builds four-stage competitive strategy
F & P Manufacturing Inc., a tier-one automotive components supplier, focused on four areas when it developed a hydroforming line for manufacturing Honda Accord engine cradles. These areas were eliminating end scrap, decoupling the bending machines...
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Examining the effects of push assist on the formability of aluminum tubes
It is well-known that tube has become an important material for hydroforming hollow components. The increasing complexity of product structures, particularly in the automotive industry, often requires one or more forming operations before a tube...
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Dealing with internal pressure in free hydraulic bulging
For hydraulic tube bulging, direct pressure control is the most commonly used process. Pressure control allows engineers to determine the correct capacity hydraulic system and, more importantly, prevent tube rupture. However, inflow control, or...
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Tube Hydroforming Design Flexibility—Part III
The last article in this series noted that variable periphery design, or cross-section expansion, often is thought to be the most important aspect of tube hydroforming design flexibility. Expansion in the hydroforming die commonly is assumed to be...
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Fill 'er Up
Hydroforming is gaining ground in the manufacture of many automotive components,such as pillars, frame rails, and engine cradles. Automakers are finding hydroforming advantageous for forming many smaller parts also. The process is useful for...
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Hydroforming of passenger car fuel tanks
Passenger car fuel tanks have for many years been made out of plastic. To reduce MTBE leaks in the groundwater, the Department of Energy, The State of California, and the Western States Petroleum Association are studying material alternatives such...
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Tube Hydroforming Design Flexibility—Part II
It's difficult to overemphasize the importance of cross section expansion when you're talking about successful and innovative hydroforming of steel tubing.
Overemphasizing one aspect of the tube hydroforming design process can take attention...
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Analyzing tubes, lubes, dies, and friction
Comparing and correlating two tests, a common bench test (twist compression) and a straight-tube corner-fill test, simulate hydroforming to find the coefficient of friction.
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Material property variations in tubes used for hydroforming
As tubular hydroforming becomes a competitive process for the mass production of automotive parts, a tube's material properties must be consistent. To predict variations in material properties, many tube producers use the uniaxial tensile test....
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Designing a hydroforming press for research, production
A new type of hydroforming press was recently developed for sheet applications. The new press incorporates data acquisition and control features for research purposes. Current press frame designs for tube and sheet forming are uneconomic for large...
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Tube Hydroforming Design Flexibility—Part I
Design flexibility is something that all automotive designers want, but too often they lack a thorough understanding of what that means—what aspects of design flexibility apply to a certain part and their effect on cost.
A methodology often...
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Determining flow stress of tubes
This article discusses tests that are used to evaluate flow stress in tube and why the uniaxial test is not suitable for this application. It discusses a bulge test, which stresses the tube biaxially, including tooling, software, and analysis...
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Predicting failure in hydroforming prevent aluminum tubes: Strain variables require sophisticated analysis
This article discusses an approach to predicting failure in hydroforming prebent aluminum tubes. While strains are well researched for stamping sheet, this type of knowledge is lacking for hydroforming tubular components. Because the strains are...
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Hydroforming gains ground in Germany
This article examines hydroforming in Germany, focusing on the advancement of the technology. It specifically discusses growing automotive uses, a new type of hydroforming press, material quality requirements, cost factors, new testing methods,...
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Hydroforming provides Rx for medical pumps
This article relates how a Florida-based company used hydroforming to produce titanium housings for implantable pumps for a Massachusetts-based manufacturer.
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How material influences bending for hydroforming
The bending characteristics of a tube depend on the material it is made of. Exceeding the allowable limits of this deformation results in unusable parts. The author relates his company's examination and comparison of the bending of two different...
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Hydroforming Y-shaped stainless steel exhaust components
T-shapes and Y-shapes are the most commonly hydroformed exhaust system components for automobiles. This article reports on the investigation into the metal flow in Y-shape hydroforming by the Engineering Research Center for Net Shape Manufacturing...
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Using hydroforming aluminum components versus steel stampings
This article examines two transitions that are occurring in the automotive industry—the change from stamping to hydroforming, and the substitution of aluminum where steel was used previously.
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Hydroforming a new front automotive structure
Hydroforming the parts in a vehicle structure can be of immense benefit on several counts, as a review of a recent project at the author's company can attest.
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Hydroforming with end feeding
The list of applications for hydroforming with end feeding is growing all the time. Maybe you should check into how this technology could benefit your operation.
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