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Modern open-die forging plants consisting of the forging press and one or two rail-bound manipulators are highly dynamic production plants. Apart from the pure production speed, the main focus today is on the achievement of minimum forging tolerances and a consistently high level of quality. Furthermore, the logging of the production process and possible deviations from the specifications is demanded, in particular for products for energy engineering and for the aircraft and aerospace industries. To meet these demands, SMS Meer has developed the new optimisation program ForgeBase. It is based on the experience gained with the forging programs MD-DATAFORGE® and COMFORGE®. Before the merger of the open-die forging departments of Mannesmann Demag Metallurgy and SMS Eumuco GmbH, these pro-grams had been developed and offered separately by the two companies. Calculation and optimisation of efficient and cost-effective pass schedules allowing for the technological material limits have been raised to a new, previous unattained level as a result of the combination of the two formerly competing products. The influence of the machine operator on the monitoring of the process is decreased in order to reduce the personnel-related fluctuations in quality. The operator is, however, still able to initiate corrections to the automatic forging process at any time or to finish the process in manual mode if the operating situation necessitates. These interventions are detected by ForgeBase, however, and protocolled in the event of a tolerance limit being exceeded. All our systems have been developed by our own personnel in close cooperation with leading forging plants and universities and are constantly maintained at the state-of-the-art. We regard the creation of instruments for our customers that permit efficient preparation, control and monitoring of the forging process as representing a major part of our key competence. |
