A Study on Smart Roll Forming Based on Real Time Process Data

Abstract

Roll forming refers to the production of long plate molded products such as panels, pipes, tubes, channels, and frames by continuously causing bending deformation to thin plates using rotating rolls. Since the roll forming method has advantages in terms of mass production because of its excellent productivity, the size of the roll forming industry has been continuously increasing and the roll forming method is being used in diverse industrial fields as a very important processing method. Since the roll forming method mainly depends on the continuous bending deformation of the plate materials, the time and cost used for heterogeneous materials developed in the process are relatively large when seen from the viewpoint of plastic working because many processes are continuously implemented. Existing studies on the roll forming manufacturing as such involve the losses of large amounts of time and materials when raw materials or product types are changed, can hardly secure the uniformity of formed shapes and the quality of sizes, and cannot detect all defects occurring in mass production and the dimension. Although dedicated lines with fixed settings for individual products may be considered for the foregoing reasons, the formation of individual dedicated roll forming lines for individual products faces great difficulties due to excessive manufacturing costs. Therefore, in this study, a real - time process data based smart roll forming that can be applied to multiple products was studied. As a result of such a study, a roll forming system was implemented that remembers and automatically sets changes in fine adjusted values of the supplied quantities of individual heterogeneous materials so that the equipment setting changing time for heterogeneous material replacements or changes in the products being produced can be shortened and secures the uniformity of products so that more competitive precise slide rail products can be mass-produced with improvements in the quality, price, and productivity of products. In addition, smart roll forming process designs were numerically analyzed and the results were applied so that targeted shapes can be approached faster, the reactions in reduction processes by step can be evenly distributed to reduce the intensity fatigue of each process roller, the productivity can be improved, and, in particular, fine cracks or damage to rollers can be prevented thereby removing the fundamental cause of the
occurrence of mass defects.