Improving the efficiency of bending machines

[10 Oct. 2011] High demands are placed upon automatic bending machines for fully automatic production of sheet steel products, including utmost precision and efficiency in production, short process cycles and low energy consumption. Modern simulation and modeling methods and model reduction methods deliver significant increases in efficiency and performance. A current example is the lightproof production of housing parts in the lighting industry on automatic bending machines without additional processing steps.

Complex sheet-steel products can be found in various application domains. Common examples include elevator doors and cabins, steel furniture, and housings of various devices in the household, the office and industry. Bending machines by Salvagnini Maschinenbau GmbH enable the largely fully automatic manufacture of such products. A high degree of automation and flexibility is required with minimal energy demand.

A longstanding research cooperation with ACCM has supported the development process at Salvagnini through the use of model-based engineering in combination with modern simulation and measurement methods and model reduction methods. This has achieved a very detailed understanding of the processes, which has led to enormous improvements in efficiency and performance.

On the one hand the development process was accelerated so that a prototype corresponds to 95% to the series production version; on the other hand, machines can be utilized optimally, enabling production with a batch size of 1 (i.e., efficient production of individually configured products). Avoidance of costly setup cycles and of scrap enables optimized utilization of available resources. Optimized setting of process parameters allows up to 90% reduction of the forces despite improved production quality. This significantly increases the lifetime of a machine.

The additional design measures enabled a reduction of mean energy consumption by 75% over a decade. In addition, visible marks on the metal have been minimized and the complexity of the products has increased. This opens completely new application domains.

A current example in the lighting industry is the production of housing parts with lightproof edges. The achieved precision enables production of the lightproof parts on bending machines without additional processing steps.
ACCM is handling basic research relevant topics such as the elimination of longitudinal bending of the bent metal parts, the identification of material parameters from the measured process forces, and the development of new, highly efficient machine concepts.

Research results have been published in:
Zehetner C., Cojocaru E., Hammelmüller F., Holl H., Irschik, H. Kunze, W., “Modellbasiertes Engineering zur Steigerung der Flexibilität and Effizienz bei Abkantautomaten” (Model-based engineering for improving the flexibility and efficiency of automatic bending machines), Smart Production, Conference Proceedings of Industrial Symposium on Mechatronics (ISM, 18 Nov. 2010), Linz, Austria, 2010.

Company contact:
Salvagnini Maschinenbau GmbH
Dr. Guido Salvagnini-Straße 1, A-4482 Ennsdorf, Austria
www.salvagninigroup.com

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