VALUE CREATION PROCESS FOR FORMING VEHICLE BEAMS FROM EXTRUDED ALUMINUM PIPES

摘要

A value stream process or method for forming vehicle rails from extruded aluminum tubes includes the steps of extruding an aluminum tube and hydroforming the extruded aluminum tube into a vehicle rail. More specifically, the method includes extruding the aluminum tube, bending the aluminum tube, preforming the aluminum tube, hydroforming the aluminum tube into a vehicle rail, trimming the vehicle rail to length and then artificially aging the rail followed by batch chemical pretreatment. In an alternative embodiment the artificial aging and batch chemical pretreatment processes are performed in reverse order. In either of the embodiments, localized induction annealing to recover formability may be performed between bending and preforming, between preforming and hydroforming or both.