Introduction to Tie Rod Ball Joint Forging Automation Production Line
Tie Rod Ball Joint is an important security part in the steering tie rod assembly. It plays the role of transmitting force to achieve steering. It is a die forging. Nowadays, there is a shortage of labor, and fewer and fewer people are willing to participate in the forging industry.so it is imperative to promote the automation of forging.
Process Description
Taking our company's BJ1046Tie Rod Ball Joint product as an example (see product photo in Figure 1), the blank weight is 0.8kg and the forging weight is 0.68kg. The forging process of the existing joint product is: 1 person manual unloading, medium frequency heating, 1 person There are 6 people in total on the line, including air hammer drawing, 3 people for final forging, 1 person for trimming, and finished products being transported into baskets. The production cycle is 5 seconds per piece. The production efficiency is high, but there are too many people, it is difficult to recruit workers, and the cost of workers is high. In view of this situation, we carefully analyzed and configured a fully automatic forging production line based on the requirements of automation (see Figure 2 for the production line).
Configuration requirements
⑴ Meet the mass production of BJ1022 and BJ1046 connectors;
⑵ The cycle time of a single piece is within 7 seconds, and based on 300 days of production, the annual output is about 2.8 million pieces;
⑶ Realize a fully automatic production mode from loading, medium frequency heating, billet making, final forging and trimming;
⑷Low failure rate, allowed to occur once per shift;
⑸The mold has a long service life, ensuring continuous production for more than 5 shifts;
⑹ The mold is easy to replace and the positioning is accurate.
Process and equipment configuration
The entire line is configured as follows:
All equipment signals are interconnected and interoperable, and the master control cabinet is set up to realize bus control of the entire line. There are entire line fault alarms and fault protections. When a fault occurs in a certain process, there will be countermeasures in the previous process, such as The semi-finished products produced are thrown aside, and subsequent processes are stopped until the fault is resolved.
Effect
⑴ Completed the automated production of the entire line, promoted the application of the company's automation technology, and played a certain leading role;
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⑵ The staff reduction has been achieved, and the number of people in a single shift has been reduced from 6 to 1. They are only patrolling to handle abnormalities;
⑶ Achieve two pieces in one mold, forging once every 12 to 13 seconds, that is, 1 piece in 6 to 6.5 seconds. Although it cannot reach 1 piece in 5 seconds, it can continue to produce for a long time. Except when a failure occurs, it will continue to produce. Increase overall efficiency by 5% to 15%;
⑷ Stabilize product quality and maintain product size consistency;
⑸ The overall cost has increased slightly, the equipment investment has been large, and the maintenance costs have increased. Only through year-round statistics can we have relatively reliable data.
Some details during debugging
⑴ When cutting the blank, the end face should be as neat as possible without burrs, otherwise it will be arched when it is heated by medium frequency induction heating, and the material cannot be fed normally. If you use a CNC band saw or circular saw machine to cut the material, there will be basically no fault.
⑵ After receiving the material, the roll forging machine starts rolling the billet in 4 passes. After completion, it is thrown into the slideway with a clamp and dropped directly onto the conveyor belt.
⑶The gripper of the automatic line robot should be designed according to the shape of the product and grasped reasonably.
⑷The state of the product must be stable in each process. For example, the upper and lower dies of pre-forging and final forging must be designed with ejection mechanisms. The ejection mechanism below can generally use the ejection cylinder configured under the original equipment, and the upper ejection cylinder must be on the upper die base. An ejector cylinder is added to realize the ejection of the upper mold. Of course, the ejection system must be stable. The ejection of the mold ejector depends on the hydraulic system, and the retraction uses a compression spring.
⑸ At the edge trimming point, the trimming die is placed on top, and the trimming punch is placed below, so that the robot can easily place the parts accurately. After trimming, the flash is placed on the punch, and a flash pneumatic top is placed under the punch. When the workpiece is taken away by the robot, the ejection plate pushes up the flash and separates from the punch, so that the flash removal mechanism can smoothly remove the flash
⑹ Graphite emulsion spraying part, this place should be convenient for adjusting the amount of graphite spraying, because the degree of wear of the mold, the structural form of the product, the temperature of the mold and other factors often affect the mold ejection.
Conclusion
The automated forging production line of this joint realizes the automation of the entire forging process, solves the problem of difficulty in recruiting forging workers, stabilizes product quality, and extends production time.
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