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2017
Conference Paper
Titel
Trimming of flat and tubular components by high speed impact cutting (HSIC)
Abstract
The trend for lightweight construction, especially in the automotive industry, leads to increased use of corresponding lightweight materials. In addition to novel construction materials such as fiber-reinforced plastics, established materials such as steel or aluminum are continuously being further developed, which is usually accompanied with a distinct increase in their strength. Beside material-related lightweight construction, new designs are applied such as the profile design. The disadvantage of this development is that established forming processes such as deep drawing, profile bending, hydroforming, but also shearing of high-strength components increasingly reach their process limits. Particularly in the case of trimming of high-strength components, such as press-hardened components, it is hard to present conventional shearing processes in serial processes due to low tool life and deficient cutting surface quality. For this reason the laser cutting technology is often used. It is characterized by high flexibility and can mostly meet the requirements regarding component quality. In contrast to shearing, however, it requires very long process cycle time due to its process rate, which makes it significantly less productive. High speed impact cutting offers an alternative. By exploiting high speed effects in the material, which leads to adiabatic heating of the shearing zone and a related significant reduction in strength, even ultra-high strength steel materials with tensile strengths of above 1500 MPa can be cut in high quality and with a short cycle time. In order to transfer this technology to serial applications and to develop process limits, extensive investigations were carried out using high-strength sheet metal materials and tube materials. The results are presented in this paper.