Dry Rotary Swaging

Abstract

Rotary swaging is an incremental cold forming process for rods and tubes and has a wide spread use in the automotive industry for the manufacture of axles or steering spindles. The advantage of rotary swaging is the optimal use of work piece material resources, due to material strengthening and the ability to manufacture hollow parts with variable wall thicknesses. The established processes use lubricants which fulfil necessary functions such as cooling, washing abrasive particles out of the forming zone and to provide an adequate work piece surface quality. Both, under economic and ecological aspects, the development of rotary swaging towards a dry process layout is highly innovative. To avoid ex-tensive lubrication it is necessary to substitute the above mentioned functions of the lubricant by new innovative ap-proaches. This work shows an interdisciplinary approach for dry rotary swaging, at first a FE modelling and simulation of the rotary swaging process for understanding and designing a dry process. Furthermore, coated tools are presented for the reduction of abrasive and adhesive wear of the tool and structured tools for the control of friction and process forces. At last the combination of both tool modifications is demonstrated.