Automotive Design and Production

OCT 2013

Automotive Design & Production is the one media brand invested in delivering your message in print, online, via email, and in-person to the right automotive industry professionals at the right time.

Issue link: https://adp.epubxp.com/i/181113

Contents of this Issue

Navigation

Page 11 of 59

AD&P; > October 2013 > NOTABLE Stamping at Renault Trucks "Renault Trucks can use both the existing dies of an older press line and specially developed dies for the production of the new truck cabins," says Dr. Martin Habert, managing director of Schuler SMG and head of Technology, Field Hydraulic Presses (schulergroup.com). He's speaking of what the French manufacturer has done in its stamping operations, driven by the need to develop a new lineup of vehicles to meet Euro 6 emissions standards for trucks, which go into efect January 1, 2014. In all, Renault Trucks is using more than 80 diferent die sets to produce the cabs for its range of trucks in its plant in Lyon. The new system from Schuler—a blank loader, a 2,000-metric ton hydraulic press, three 1,000-ton presses, and material-handling automation—allows die set and tooling changes in less than fve minutes. "This makes q Renault Trucks uses a high-performance Schuler hydraulic press line to build its new feet. 10 producing even the smallest batch sizes both simple and economic," Habert says. The line can operate at up to 11 strokes per minute, and as two parts can be made in tandem, that's 22 parts per minute. The bed-slide surfaces are 4.1 x 2.5 m. In operation, fanning magnets are used to separate the blanks so a robot picks up one blank at a time to place on a conveyor. An optical centering station determines the position of the blanks on the conveyor so that the pressloading robot is able to appropriately locate the blank in the die of the lead press for deep drawing. Schuler Crossbar Robots are used to move the stamping between the subsequent presses. These presses help minimize the overall length of the line. Overall size was a key consideration. According to Schuler, the press line was tailored to the size of the Renault Trucks stamping hall.

Articles in this issue

Links on this page

Archives of this issue

view archives of Automotive Design and Production - OCT 2013