Development and optimization of economic tool concepts
Our research activities focus on the development and optimization of economic tool concepts and means of production for implementing new or extended forming technologies. Numerous different requirements necessitate the use of new tool concepts. For this purpose it is essential to generally increase productivity and to reduce the cost for the means of production. These methods can be realized by applying various approaches which are strongly influenced by the production environment and the targeted number of pieces. For example, in mass production it is useful to balance out fluctuations by appropriate sensors and actuators, thus ensuring high yield. When dealing with manufacturing of prototypes and small batch sizes, it is expedient to reduce tool cost. This can be achieved by the key approach of considerably reducing the component-specific shape memory degree of the tools and means of production.