Novel Process Chain for Hot Metal Gas Forming of Ferritic Stainless Steel 1.4509

Exhaust gas components of automobiles are often produced in ferritic stainless steel 1.4509 due to the low thermal expansion coefficient and the low material price. Until now, components of the stainless steel with complex geometries have been produced in series by means of multi-stage hydroforming at room temperature with intermediate annealing operations. The application of a single-stage hot-forming process, also referred to as hot metal gas forming (HMGF), offers great potential to significantly reduce the production costs of such components. The article describes a novel process chain for the HMGF process. Therefore the tube is heated in two steps. After pre-heating of the semi-finished product outside the press, the tube is heated up to forming start temperature by means of a tool-integrated conductive heating before forming. For the tube of a demonstrator geometry, a simulation model for the conduction heating was set up. In addition to the tool development for this process, experimental results are also described for the production of the demonstrator geometry.