Avanços em Engenharia Automobilística
Acesso livre

Abstrato

One-shot manufacturing method to improve Quality and Productivity of lightweight interior/exterior parts

Alfonso Molaro

The completely automation of a manufacturing processes lead to higher production rates and increased productivity, better product quality, improved safety and reduced factory lead times. The One-Shot® Method was created to include all of the steps of traditional car components manufacturing into a single an all-in-one process; it’s the fastest and most sustainable patented method of manufacturing auto parts, which optimizes industrial processes to reduce production times and costs. The cargo area components are currently covered with needle-punched fabric applied by gluing. A new process has been developed by SAPA that allows the automatic coating of the plastic component with needle-punched fabric implementing the injection molding process with injecto-compression cycle, to avoid the crushing of the fabric and achieve the same quality effect as with gluing. The same One-Shot manufacturing method has been implemented on interior pillars, multi-components, consisting of a part made of thermoplastic material, a layer of sound-absorbing polyurethane foam material and a fabric or leather covering. The One-Shot® Aero Shield is the new underbody aerodynamic shield patented by SAPA. This component is traditionally produced by thermoforming or injection molding of a thermoplastic material, as Polypropylene, with the addition of an insert in aluminum or a layer of thermally stabilized preox fibre to improve thermal and acoustic performance. The new One-Shot® Aero Shield multilayer component made of a layer of thermoplastic material, Polypropylene, injection molded on a layer of thermally stabilized preox fibre. The new underbody aerodynamic shield shows a good thermal performance and the addition of the insert of aluminum is no more necessary. Thus, the product is made in one single phase, improving productivity and product quality. A 1-shot hot stamping process consisting of resistance heating, forming, shearing and die quenching was developed to produce small- and medium-size ultra-high strength steel parts. A rectangular sheet was resistance-heated to obtain a uniform distribution of temperature, and just after the end of heating, a sequence of forming, shearing and die quenching was performed by one shot to prevent the drop in temperature. An ultra-high strength steel spur gear having a hardness of 540 HV2 was produced by 1-shot hot stamping composed of heating, blanking and die quenching. The rollover was improved by partial compression of the blanked gear. An ultra-high strength stainless steel part having a hardness of 580 HV2 was produced by 1-shot hot stamping consisting of the heating, bending, shearing and die quenching, and no springback and quenching distortion of the produced part were observed by holding at the bottom dead centre of the press. An operation for thickening the edge of the punched hole was included in 1-shot hot stamping to improve the strength of a product.