Some Strategies to Reduce the Manufacturing Cost for Low-Volume Hydroformed Parts

摘要

Low cost, low weight and improved quality- the "holy grail" of engineers in the automotive industry- are the driving forces to popularize the hydroforming process. However, although China has become the one of the top auto maker countries, hydroforming is still hard to use in China auto industry. The paper analyzes the requirement situation of hydroformed parts in China and comes up that the effective way to reduce the capital investment and manufacturing cost for low-volume hydroformed parts is to develop the economic hydroforming machine and simplify the production tooling design. The paper also introduce HM series compact hydroforming machine and the related tools developed in Nanjing University of Science and Technology and their strategies in developing the economic HF machine and the tooling design. The HM series compact hydroforming machine has been used in the Auto part production in China, and the manufacturing cost of each hydroformed part is almost approach to the stamping part.