AD&P; > May 2015 > NOTABLE
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Audi's Intelligent Aluminum Forming
The hood of the Audi TT is made of aluminum. If you talk to
some people (people who have a certain bias for things of a
ferrous nature), you'll hear about the difcultly of being able
to achieve sharp edge and tight radii when forming aluminum.
But one glance at the sharp contours on the hood of the TT
(they call them "swoosh lines" back in Ingolstadt) seems to
indicate that you can do some rather impressive forming in
aluminum.
Well, that is if you have the right equipment to get the job
done.
The equipment in question here was developed by Audi
Toolmaking.
They're using four lasers in the forming tool to make certain
that the fanges are right. Measurements from the lasers
are sent to a computer. Should it be determined that there's
something of, that there's a deviation, then the forces of the
four drawing aids that clamp the sheet metal in the fange
area are adjusted via electric actuators (each with some
30 metric tons of force) as required.
Audi presently has 12 of these so-called "intelligent tools"
distributed in four of its plants (Ingolstadt, Neckarsulm,
Bratislava, and Györ, with the last-named being where
the TT is built).
Audi claims that the TT's aluminum body features "the
tightest radii in the world."
Importantly, the intelligent tools cut way down on the
number of panels that are rejected because of things
like tears and splits, so they're getting those radii in an
efective manner.
q The aluminum hood on the Audi TT is crisply formed
thanks to tools that include lasers to measure uniformity
of the blanks prior to processing.