Compensation Strategy for Shape Defects in Flexible Roller Beading

The novel forming process ‘Flexible Roller Beading’ (FRB) represents an extension of roll forming. In addition to the familiar horizontal relative movement between the material and the forming tool during roll forming, FRB also offers the possibility of vertical positioning of the forming tools during the process. This vertical movement is flexibly adjustable and enables the continuous production of profiles with height-variable cross-sections. Unlike roll forming, the cross-sectional geometry of the profiles produced by FRB is determined not only by the tool geometry, but also to a large extent by the tool movement. In previous studies on FRB, the motion curves of the forming tools exactly represent the desired target geometry of the profiles. However, there are deviations between this target geometry and the actual profile geometry, because significant spring-back effects occur during the process. This creates the need for a compensation strategy to reduce these deviations. There are various methods for compensating geometry deviations in different manufacturing processes. Derived from these methods, this paper presents a compensation strategy for shape defects in FRB through the targeted use of the tool system’s degrees of freedom. This compensation strategy is based on numerical investigations and enables the adaptation of the tool movement in such a way that the occurring shape defects can be reduced.