The advantages of hydroforming

The advantages of hydroforming

Hydroforming is similar to the conventional deep-drawing technique, but has significant advantages for the formed part and keeps the tooling costs and hence the component production costs low.

Better degree of deformation for the formed part

By applying a uniform force to the metal sheet, the fluid shapes it into the form of the tool. In this process, a uniform distribution of sheet thicknesses is achieved, which allows for maximum degrees of deformation. Abrupt changes in stress are avoided – a factor that ensures high dimensional accuracy and reduces the tendency of the material to return to its original size and shape when the applied load is removed.

Conventional deep-drawing		Hydroformed with the FB25
strong local thinning of the material inhomogeneous distribution of material thicknesses less internal stress of the formed part		less internal stress and less tendency to return to its original shape homogeneous strength and less amount of waste high dimensional accuracy

Surfaces

Since the metal sheet is deformed using a pressurized fluid instead of a conventional deep-drawing die, the surface is not in direct contact with any tool that may lead to surface damage. In the hydroforming process, the metal sheet only comes into contact with the tool when the maximum required forming pressure is reached. This results in excellent surface quality of the formed parts.

Engineering materials

The hydroforming process allows you to use the complete spectrum of all ductile and malleable materials.

No matter if you are using steel sheets, stainless steel, special alloys, aluminium, copper, brass or titan: for all of them, optimum degrees of deformation can be achieved.

Metal sheet thicknesses range from 0.05 to 6 mm. Specifically for very thin metal sheets, the possibilities of hydroforming are far superior to those of conventional forming techniques.

Savings in tooling costs of up to 80 %

Low tooling costs are a great advantage of the hydroforming process using the FormBalancer. Tooling costs are reduced to 50% by the fact alone that only the negative moulding tool is needed. Further savings are generated by no longer needing hold-down devices and guide way systems. Due to the possibilities of forming complex geometries with only one tool, upstream machining operations can often be omitted, which in most cases reduces tooling costs to only 20% compared to those of conventional deep-drawing tools.