Improving the flow forming process by a novel closed-loop control

The incremental flow forming process is currently enhanced in research context by special closed-loop property control concepts to increase the productivity and to control the product properties making invisible property structures like a magnetic barcode possible. However, it is preferred to establish property control concepts on single roller machines instead of conventional machines with three roller actuation due to the better machine accessibility. For those single roller machines, rather poor surface qualities of flow formed workpieces were observed in the past especially for hydraulic actuators. Thus, a new actuator closed-loop position control concept is developed in this paper using model-based control design methods and taking the flow forming forces as a load into account. The novel closed-loop control is validated during workpiece production at the actual single roller flow forming machine. An analysis of the manufactured workpieces show that the surface quality is significantly enhanced by the new control to a roughness level almost similar to conventional three roller flow forming. Thus, a sincere added value to the flow forming process is offered by the novel actuator closed-loop position control.