Forming Technology Of Hydraulic Press

Advantages
Compared with the traditional stamping process, the hydroforming process has obvious technical and economic advantages in reducing weight, reducing the number of parts and molds, improving rigidity and strength, and reducing production costs. It has been increasingly used in the industrial field, especially in the automotive industry.
In the automotive industry, aviation, aerospace and other fields, reducing the weight of the structure to save energy in operation is a long-term goal pursued by people and one of the trends in the development of advanced manufacturing technology. Hydroforming is an advanced manufacturing technology for achieving lightweight structure.
Hydroforming is also called "internal high pressure forming". Its basic principle is to use the pipe as the blank, apply ultra-high pressure liquid inside the pipe, and apply axial thrust to both ends of the pipe blank to fill the material. Under the joint action of the two external forces, the pipe blank material undergoes plastic deformation and finally fits with the inner wall of the mold cavity to obtain a hollow part whose shape and precision meet the technical requirements.
Advantages
For hollow variable-section structural parts, the traditional manufacturing process is to first stamp and form two half pieces and then weld them into a whole, while hydroforming can form hollow structural parts with changes along the cross section of the component in one go. Compared with stamping and welding processes, hydraulic forming technology and processes have the following main advantages:
1. Reduce weight and save materials. For typical parts such as automobile engine brackets and radiator brackets, hydraulic forming parts are 20% to 40% lighter than stamping parts; for hollow stepped shaft parts, the weight can be reduced by 40% to 50%.
2. Reduce the number of parts and molds, and reduce mold costs. Hydroformed parts usually only require one set of molds, while stamping parts mostly require multiple sets of molds. The number of hydraulically formed engine bracket parts is reduced from 6 to 1, and the number of radiator bracket parts is reduced from 17 to 10.
3. It can reduce the amount of welding for subsequent machining and assembly. Taking the radiator bracket as an example, the heat dissipation area is increased by 43%, the number of welding points is reduced from 174 to 20, the number of processes is reduced from 13 to 6, and the productivity is increased by 66%.
4. Improve strength and stiffness, especially fatigue strength. For example, the stiffness of the hydraulically formed radiator bracket can be increased by 39% in the vertical direction and 50% in the horizontal direction.
5. Reduce production costs. According to the statistical analysis of parts that have been hydroformed, the production cost of hydroformed parts is 15% to 20% lower than that of stamped parts on average, and the mold cost is reduced by 20% to 30%.