Page 24 - MetalForming August 2017

Servo Successes
7300 by 2500-mm bed. Among its sell- ing points, says Scherle, is the tailout feature on the press’s feed line, “which can eliminate 10 to 20 ft. of material waste per coil, a significant savings for our customers, especially with AHSS.”
With its new-found ability to take on even larger and more complex parts, due to the ability of the larger bed to handle dies with more press stations, E&E already has earmarked 28 die sets for the new press, for Mercedes and BMW programs.
“The market is tight for work on these types of presses,” Scherle says. “Few if any stampers have excess capac- ity on their large transfer presses. That helped convince us to move forward with this new capital investment and position ourselves to earn new work.”
The Speed Advantage
However, it’s not just new work that has found its way to the press. Scherle describes one of the six jobs that it has moved from its older, traditional trans-
fer presses that have received big pro- ductivity boosts when running on the new Schuler servo model:
“The job at hand is a visible, exposed automotive part stamped from 2-mm-thick DP800 AHSS, which ran at 14 strokes/min. on one of our older transfer presses. Now running on the servo press, by tailoring the press curve and quickening the overall transfer and feed-line process we increased run rate to 24 strokes/min., a nice boost in productivity.”
To help engineers find opportunities to optimize the stamping process, E&E employs a Schuler software tool called Transfer Pro, which it supplies as an add-on with its servo presses.
“After we get our dies inhouse,” Scherle explains, “which have previously been optimized in AutoForm and com- pletely simulated (including transfer simulation), we plug them into the Schuler optimization software and often gain significant speed advantages.”
Transfer Pro optimizes servo-press
kinematics, according to Schuler, tak- ing into account the transfer curves and the coil-feed capabilities. “We often takes jobs estimated to run at 14 to 16 strokes/min.,” shares Scherle, “and optimize them in the Schuler software to run at 20 to 22 strokes/min.”
The Trim Advantage
In addition to appreciating the abil- ity to gain additional strokes/min., Scherle also boasts of the presses’ abil- ity to avoid splits when forming difficult AHSS parts.
“We run AHSS exclusively on our two servo presses now,” he says. “The presses are tight with little or no play, and they are very controllable. Forming AHSS requires your tools to be in excel- lent condition, and the way that the servo presses operate really protects our tools. That provides very tight clear- ances, and, therefore, perfect trim and shear conditions. Without those con- ditions, any edge imperfection—the tiniest microcrack—with AHSS will propagate into a split during forming. We seek perfect trim conditions, and the servo presses give us that.”
Servos Deliver Speed, Force Control for Aluminum Stamping Within in the last few years, two huge servo-transfer presses have joined the ranks at the Thai Summit America’s 1- million-plus-square-ft. stamping and assembly facility in Howell, MI. The big- bed (7300 by 2300-mm bolster) 1200- ton presses, both Simpac models, joined, in 2014 and 2015, respectively, two other servo presses previously installed at the facility. They allow the firm to take on an increasing amount of aluminum stamping for the Ford F150 program; it also supplies the Ford F250 and F350,
and the Ford Escape programs.
Thai Summit America, which in 2009 took over the facility previously operated by Ogihara, stamps parts as small as 4 by 4 in. to as large as 13 by 7 ft., using transfer presses and tandem lines with press capacity to 2700 tons. The company, known for its deep-draw expertise, has vast experience stamping high-strength steels and tailor-welded
JIER IS A PROUD SPONSOR OF
THIS YEAR’S SERVO TECHNOLOGY CONFERENCE
JIER North America Inc. • Plymouth, MI (734) 404-6683 • sales@jier-na.com
22 MetalForming/August 2017
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