Process Routing for Hydroforming
The cost model supports two types of hydroforming machines and three alternative blanking processes, so there are six main routings corresponding to the six possible combinations of hydroforming machine type and blanking process:
The hydroforming machine types include the following:
• Fluid Cell: has a stationary lower tray, on which the tool rests. It can used to create bends and relatively shallow forms, and often utilizes fully developed blanks. Some undercut geometry is supported by fluid cell machines.
If a part created on a fluid cell machine has both up and down bends, multiple fluid cell cycles are required.
• Deep Draw: has a lower tray (on which the tool rests) that can be displaced to create form depth.
If a part’s forms are sufficiently deep or form multiple step-like groups, multiple deep draw machine cycles are required. If multiple cycles are required, the part is annealed between cycles—see below.
The blanking processes include the following:
• 2 Axis Router (Router Cut): cuts nested blanks out of sheet stock. This is modeled by a process in the Sheet Metal process group.
• Laser Cut: cuts nested blanks out of sheet stock. This is modeled by a process in the Sheet Metal process group.
• Offline Blank: feeds coil stock into a shear press dedicated to blanking, which uses hard tooling to punch out nested blanks.
Here are the six main routings:
Each routing includes the following processes:
• One of the following utilization processes:
o Sheet Material Stock: this is the material utilization process for Laser Cut and Router Cut routings. It performs stock selection, and calculates material utilization and cost.
o Coil Material Stock: material utilization process for Offline Blank routings. It performs stock selection, and calculates material utilization and cost.
• One of the following blanking processes:
o Offline Blanking
o Laser Cut
o 2 Axis-Router
• Hydroform Cycles: this process has at least one occurrence of the component-level child operation, Hydroform. It has one occurrence of Hydroform for each hydroforming cycle the part requires. (If a fluid cell part has both up and down bends, there may be multiple hydroforming cycles; if a deep draw part has very deep or stepped forms, there may be multiple hydroforming cycles.)
Each occurrence of the Hydroform operation itself has exactly one occurrence of a component-level child operation, either Hydroform Fluid Cell (for fluid cell routings) or Hydroform Deep Draw (for deep draw routings).
In the example above, the suffix [2] in Hydroform Cycles [2] indicates the number of occurrences of Hydroform included in the routing. Except for the first occurrence, occurrences of Hydroform Fluid Cell or Hydroform Deep Draw are labelled with a suffix to distinguish different occurrences from one another (as in Hydroform Fluid Cell:2 in the example above).
• Bench Operation: provides operations for cleaning and inspecting the blank after forming is complete. This process is part of the Sheet Metal—Stretch Forming process group.
Note that, for 2-Axis Router and Laser Cut routings, the blanking process appears after Hydroform Cycles in the Manufacturing Process pane (see the image below), even though blanking actually occurs before forming. This is because these blanking processes are part of the Sheet Metal process group.
Parts that require multiple draws are typically annealed between draws. This is modeled with the appropriate number of occurrences of the Standard Anneal process in the Heat Treatment process group.
As with blanking processes, the annealing process occurrences appear after Hydroform Cycles in the Manufacturing Process pane.
You can specify additional secondary processes by manually including them.