Page 8 - MetalForming May 2010

TechUpdate
Tailor Welded Coils: Applications, Results and Body-Structure Impact
Tailor-welded coils bring tailor-welded blank (TWB) benefits to progressive-die and roll-formed parts. Weight and cost savings along with part consolidation are the forces driving this new technology.
Leading the way in North America is TWB Co., LLC, Monroe, MI, and we asked the firm’s manager of new product development Mark Eisenmenger to sum- marize the company’s work in this area. What follows is a brief summary of a paper Mark prepared for Great Designs in Steel 2010, held May 5 in Livonia, MI.
There are 18 common TWB appli- cations in the automotive body-in- white, but more than 35 applications have been identified for tailor-welded coils—technology developed in Ger- many and based on technology that evolved for high-volume blank-welding applications. TWB Co. has completed several design and feasibility studies that illustrate potential applications for the
North American market and the impact this technology will make on automotive steel-body structures.
ThyssenKrupp Steel’s Tai-
lor Welded Blank group,
based in Duisburg, Germany,
already has eight produc-
tion applications using tai-
lor-welded coils, and sev-
eral additional parts
scheduled for implementa-
tion in the next several years. Tailor-welded coils are implemented much the same way that tailor-welded blanks have been implemented over the past 25 years, and may have more poten- tial due to the number of coil-fed press and forming processes used in metal fab- rication. Using conventional and advanced high-strength steels, tailor-welded coils offer weight and cost savings by utilizing the exact gauge and grade of steel that
the finished part requires. Sheet thick- ness can range from 0.4 to 3.5 mm, with weld length to 4 m.
Another major benefit of using tailor- welded steel products is the ability to con- solidate parts into single stamped com- ponents that improve dimensional characteristics, lower weight and provide a significant cost savings. Many auto- motive applications realize as much as
6 METALFORMING / MAY 2010
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