TPT July 2018

T E CHNOLOG Y

100 th hot stamping line sold IN 1993 Schuler delivered the first three hot stamping lines to car manufacturer Ford in the USA. What was a brand-new method at the time has since established itself on the market as a global forming technology for automotive lightweight construction. Schuler has now sold the 100 th hot stamping line to a Chinese automotive supplier.

“Compared with forming aluminium, carbon fibre-reinforced plastics and dual phase steels, this technology is an inexpensive alternative for lightweight automobile construction,” said Daniel Huber, head of the hydraulic division at Schuler. Oemer Akyazici, CEO of Schuler China, added, “Chinese automobile manufacturers and automotive suppli- ers, such as Shanghai Superior Die Technology Co, Ltd (SSDT) or Baowei, are increasingly turning to hot stamping.” The method, which involves heating sheet steel blanks to 930° and cooling them during forming, was first introduced in the early 1990s, initially to improve passenger safety in vehicles, for example to reinforce the doors in the Saab 9000, helping it to pass strict crash tests in the USA. The technology was first introduced to large series production of the Ford Sierra in Europe and the Ford Mercury in the USA. The side impact beams and bumpers were created on Schuler systems at the time. The industry

Schuler opened the Hot Stamping TechCenter in 2016

Photo credit: Schuler

on more than 400 systems worldwide, and further growth is anticipated. Mr Huber commented, “Schuler identified this development at an early stage, and set up a competence centre for press hardening at our Waghäusel site in the year 2006.” This was followed in 2016 by the Hot Stamping TechCenter, a research and demonstration facility at the company’s headquarters in Göppingen, Germany.

increasingly saw the method’s potential for reducing vehicle weight while meeting increasing safety requirements. Because press-hardened components have a greater tensile strength than cold-formed high-strength steels, the use of material can be reduced, making the components lighter. In 2006 the body of the Volkswagen Passat was the first to use twelve press hardened components. To allow this to happen, Schuler built six hot stamping lines and installed them at the Kassel plant. Currently, around 500 million hot stamped parts are produced annually

Schuler AG – Germany Fax: +49 7161 66 907 Website: www.schulergroup.com

Induction hardening and tempering lines for bars and pipes

Elind has also been developing a new medium frequency converter that ensures low harmonics content and a constant power factor in any working condition, avoiding the need for expensive filtering and re-phasing groups. It can be realised in a modular configuration, reaching powers of several MW, enabling high flexibility of use in different applications and easy expandability.

The machines allow flexible produc- tion, with energy consumption linked to the production time, and reduced need for maintenance. In addition to hardening and tempering lines – for bars with diameters from 15 to 250mm and pipes from 40 to 330mm, and lengths up to 15m – Elind covers other fields of application: from equipment for bright annealing of stainless steel pipes, to be combined with TIG or laser welding machines, to pipe heating and covering with epoxy resins, and equipment for reheating and axial equalisation of billets on rolling mill lines.

ELIND SpA, a manufacturer of lines for hardening and tempering bars and pipes, has strengthened its position in the market with the sales of three new lines to European steel mills, to be delivered during 2018. The equipment is completely automatic, equipped with cutting units and management supervision systems, with high productivity (two with 3 t/h and one with 6 t/h), for bars having diameters between 20 and 120mm. The lines are claimed to give excellent metallurgical structure of the treated materials, with a high repeatability of the process and a high quality of finished product.

Elind SpA – Italy Fax: +39 011 9572 502 Email: sales@elinditaly.com Website: www.elinditaly.com

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JULY 2018