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Roll forming processes

Roll forming is a high productive technique that is well-established in industry for the manufacturing of large quantities of profile-shaped products. The prevailing technique involves the use of steel materials of changing qualities and thicknesses fed into the machine from a continuous coil. The roll forming line generally includes an accumulator with an uncoiler, the forming machine with in general 20-50 forming stands, and a cutoff press. The accumulator permits continuous operation of the machine even during coil changeover. At the end of the line, the continuous profile section is cut to length by the cutoff press.

Procedure of roll forming

So far, the basic limitation of the roll forming process is mainly due to the fact that traditional roll forming machines have fixed rollers which limit the formed products to straight sections and constant cross sections geometry along the longitudinal axis. As a result, and despite the significant economic and ecological advantages, the manufacture of customer-modifiable products by roll forming cannot be taken into consideration.
One of the partners of this proposal, TU-Darmstadt, has developed new processes for the manufacture of more complex opened and closed profiles, which they have called flexible roll forming systems.

Concept of the “flexible stand”

Raw materials and resulting geometries after flexible roll forming

The TU-Darmstadt University has the ability to produce prototypes like open and closed profile shapes based on U profiles. In combination with conventional roll forming steps for example omega profiles or even closed profiles can be achieved.

Flexible roll formed profile prototypes at the TU-Darmstadt

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Roll forming processes