Innovative profile production through roll forming

Roll forming (formerly: roll profiling) is an established bending process with rotary tool movement, allowing profiles with complex cross-sections to be produced with high productivity and cost efficiency. To extend these advantages to new application areas with special lightweight requirements, conventional technology must be expanded through tempering or the integration of secondary operations (e.g., cutting operations). This enables the processing of lightweight-relevant sheet materials such as press-hardened steels and magnesium alloys, opening up new application areas for roll forming (e.g., in the mobility industry).

To support process design with FEM, programs such as COPRA, Abaqus, and LS-Dyna are used for both established application fields and new approaches. For experimental studies, Fraunhofer IWU has a roll forming facility with 9 flexibly arrangeable profiling stands, whose working shafts are individually driven by servo motors. Inductors can also be integrated for tempering the strips or sheet metal strips.

For the manufacturing of geometry-flexible, load-optimized profiles, robot-based roll forming is being developed and tested.

Our Service Portfolio

• Development of forming strategies for profile geometries
• Planning and technological dimensioning of processes, tools, and machinery
• Determination of process characteristic values
• Numerical modeling and simulation
• Evaluation of forming strategies
• Derivation of process optimizations to achieve dimensionally accurate profiles
• Prototyping
• Quality assurance, control of component properties through geometry and deformation analysis
• Market analyses
• Process chain studies, integration of secondary operations
• Benchmarking
• Cost-benefit analysis