Modern manufacturing techniques of metal forming technology are used in industrial production to an extent never thought to be possible a few decades ago. One of these metal forming processes is the Free-form bending. The Freeform-bending with a moving die is an innovative bending technology that allows for the production of complicated geometrical structures without changing the bending die. However, the control of forming process has so far been limited only to the movements of the bending die. So the inclusion of the final geometry and especially the mechanical properties of the system are not considered resulting in a reduced final product quality as well as a high consumption of both material and energy, since the manufacturer will have to manipulate the bending parameters manually until reaching an acceptable error range.

Within this DFG funded project with the reference “SPP2183” a cooperation between the Chair of Metal Forming and Casting (TUM), the Chair of Automatic Control (TUM) as well as the Steel Institute (RWTH Aachen) has started to embed the mechanical properties of the workpiece as well as its geometry inside the closed control loop. From the Automatic Control Engineering perspective, the main challenges can be classified as follow:

• The development of a reduced order model that is both real-time capable and at the same time takes into consideration all the factors affecting not only the geometry but also the mechanical properties of the product (e.g. residual stresses, hardness, ductility and strength).
• The development of an optimized controller that can both predict the propagation of the deviations and also find the most optimal strategy in order to reduce their effect before even arising.
• The development of a self-learning algorithm enabling the controller to adjust its parameters automatically, but also to be applied on a wide range of profiles and materials.

Further Information abouth this project you find under https://spp2183.de/projekt-9/.

Here you find an interesting video abouth the free-form bending process at UTG.