New Technologies for Roll Forming

Roll forming is an important branch of modern manufacturing and is widely used in many industries such as automotive, shipbuilding, aerospace, chemical, urban construction, and so on.

75% of the parts in automobiles are stamped parts, which are produced by molding. But for the trial of new models and for the requirement of consumers to personalize their cars, there is a need for targeted single-piece or small-volume flexible forming.

In the modern shipbuilding industry, it is usually single ship production or small batch production. Moreover, the size and shape of each hull plate of the ships are different, so it is not suitable to adopt the traditional mold processing method. It needs to be processed by flexible forming. Also, in the aerospace industry, vehicles and launch vehicles are in small volume production mode, making the aerospace industry in urgent demand for flexible forming technology, too.

At present, the flexible forming technologies applied to sheet forming are 3D roll forming, spin forming, shot peening, water-fire bending, single point progressive forming, multi-point forming, incremental compression forming, laser forming, and so on. The roll forming, spin forming, shot blasting and hydroforming processes are more traditional flexible forming processes and have a wide range of applications in actual production.

For the processing of three-dimensional components, 3D roll forming is the processing of plates through roll tools, which produce continuous local bending deformation of the plates. Commonly there are three rollers and four rollers, but due to the axial stiffness, the corresponding length of the processed sheet is limited. Besides, this process does not allow for the processing of multi-directional curvature components. Rotary press forming is a continuous partial forming process for the processing of rotary body parts, which is only suitable for the forming of rotary bodies.