Page 36 - MetalForming-Sep-2018-issue

“Engineering the Press Stroke” Using
State-of-the-art motion-control technology in presses, transfer systems, coil lines and even within the die itself allows stampers to customize all of the action in and around the press stroke. Result: optimum press-line performance.
September 25-26 in Grand Rapids, MI, we’ll hold our seventh annual Servo Technology Experience for metalformers, promising a plethora of useful technology tidbits stampers can take back to their shops, and immedi- ately apply. When we launched the con- ference in 2012, the focus was directly on servo-press technology. Now we’ve turned our sights to creating an advanced servo-technology confer- ence, Servo 2.0 if you will.
Presentations planned for Grand Rapids include experts from the auto- motive industry sharing their perspec- tives on the role servo-based equip- ment plays in stamping high-strength steels and aluminum alloys. And, we’ve lined up a full slate of experts covering, in great depth, how servo-based equip- ment brings speed and precision to the pressroom like never before.
Speed and Precision
Servo presses move fast, forming the centerpiece of servo-technology-satu- rated pressrooms operating at an ever- quickening pace—a money-making pulse. Servo presses, along with their state-of-the-art support equipment,
often run at two to three times the speed of conven- tional mechanical presses.
The challenge, then, as described by several of the speakers planned for the Servo Tech- nology Experi- ence, is ensuring
that all of the press-line equip- ment work pre-
cisely in concert with speedy servo presses. This year’s keynote speaker Mark Stevens, a former GM executive and now a project manager with the Center for Automotive Research, describes the advantages of servo presses this way:
“When servo-mechanical presses splashed the industry 15 to 20 years ago, we quickly understood how the ability to engineer the press stroke would allow us to reduce initial shock, saving the press and the tooling and significantly extending the mainte- nance cycle. Servo technology also
allowed us to minimize or even elimi- nate the impact of springback and twist on part dimensions when working with higher-strength materials. Then, as we took on even higher-strength materials, where you need to add heat and pres- sure to the workpiece during a dwell at bottom-dead-center, servo becomes a significant enabling technology.
“The ongoing transition to struc- tural-aluminum parts in automobiles,” Stevens continues, “makes servo-press technology even more critical. I know of (and will describe during the con- ference) one company installing five servo-press lines to stamp high-strength aluminum frame components.”
Engineering the Entire Process
While Stevens speaks of “engineer- ing the press stroke,” servo-based tech- nology allows metalformers to engineer the entire press-line operation. So notes experts from transfer-system supplier Linear Transfer and simulation-soft- ware provider T-Sim, both of whom will speak at this year’s conference.
“The pendulum-motion profile employed by most, if not all, users of servo presses offers great improvements
34 MetalForming/September 2018
www.metalformingmagazine.com
BY BRAD F. KUVIN, PUBLISHER/EDITORIAL DIRECTOR
Mark Stevens, project manager, Center for Automotive Research