Radial Forging Machines

In the continuous ambition to lower further fuel consumption and CO2 emissions, automobile manufacturers are focusing on light-weight structures, higher-strength materials and e-mobility. The GFM radial forging technology, an incremental forming process with mainly 4 radially oscillating tools, offers interesting design possibilities here. The forming of metallic materials can be done in the cold, warm and hot regime. When forging with mandrels complex hollow contours can be produced in a single operation. As the material is formed and not shaped by chip-producing operations a high material utilization and improved material properties are achieved.

Increasing requirement for reducing local CO2 emissions and calling for regenerative energy sources, lead to spreading of electrical driving mobility. Both, Hybrid- and pure electrical cars (BEV’s) require rotor shafts for their electric power train. Due to weight- and functional issues, their geometries typically have a “hollow & bottle-shaped contour”. Machining of such inner diameters is costly, but instead will be produced quite easily by radial forging process on our machines.

Limited space requires a compact design, which causes high material- and strength specifications. Consequently, this is limiting the formability to semihot processes (approx.. 700 – 850°C) and utilizing radial forging technology.

In addition to the reduction in vehicle mass, the reduction in “undampened masses” has a very positive effect on the driving behavior of a car or light commercial vehicle. Side shafts and drive shafts are used almost exclusively in hollow construction in premium and mid-range vehicles.

Increasingly, 3-piece welded shafts are also being converted into so-called “monoblock shafts”, i.e. in one piece (so-called MTS). Significantly more than 10 million shafts per year are produced with increasing tendency by means of GFM radial forging. Hollow stabilizers with load-optimized wall thicknesses also have a large “lightweight potential” and are thus typical radial forged products.

The option of weight optimized design of hollow gear shafts opens a broad application range for GFM radial forging technology. Today’s gear diversity (AT, DCT, CVT, etc.), combined with increasingly high gear numbers, demands increasingly complex shaft geometries. Weight constraints demand such shafts to be hollow. Consequently, the challenges are load-optimized design with varying wall thicknesses as well as cost efficient forming of the inner contour. We meet them typically by using flow-formed blanks that we forge into near-net shape.

We do not only sell machines, but also help you develop new forged parts. Our team of application engineers supports you from the first feasibility study to forging of trial and pre-production parts, initial production and even beyond.