Beam spring flexible manufacturing production line

Abstract

A need arose to design and build a production line that would make a long, thin, tapered and curved beam spring for a high volume automotive application. First, a cold rolling mill produces the tapered thickness part from fully annealed, oscillate wound coil of spring steel. The equipment requires fast acting / accurate sensors and hydraulic controls that run on a real-time basis by using DSP (Digital Signal Processing) computer controls. The next inline operation uses a remote located fiber optic delivery 2.2 KW diode pumped ND YAG laser with a 50/50 laser beam splitter to do continuous contour profiling of the width of the part. The part is then heated on the under side with a direct diode laser, that has a defused laser beam of oval configuration. The part is moved rapidly, so as not to melt the surface of the material and is cooled immediately with a vortex cooler. The end result is a tapered thickness and width; curved part that has been hardened and backed tempered to produce a beam spring. The production line does not have hard tools, but rather is controlled by software (“virtual tooling”) and runs at a speed of 10 meters/min for ~ 50 hours/coil. This will replace the current method of manufacture that employs progressive dies, injection molding, cold heading and manual assembly.A need arose to design and build a production line that would make a long, thin, tapered and curved beam spring for a high volume automotive application. First, a cold rolling mill produces the tapered thickness part from fully annealed, oscillate wound coil of spring steel. The equipment requires fast acting / accurate sensors and hydraulic controls that run on a real-time basis by using DSP (Digital Signal Processing) computer controls. The next inline operation uses a remote located fiber optic delivery 2.2 KW diode pumped ND YAG laser with a 50/50 laser beam splitter to do continuous contour profiling of the width of the part. The part is then heated on the under side with a direct diode laser, that has a defused laser beam of oval configuration. The part is moved rapidly, so as not to melt the surface of the material and is cooled immediately with a vortex cooler. The end result is a tapered thickness and width; curved part that has been hardened and backed tempered to produce a beam spring. The prod...