APTOS: industrial scale–up of an Advanced tube forming -Process through Thermal Optimization, enabling energy and manufacturing costs Savings

ended

The project aims at the up scaling and industrial exploitation of the APTOS manufacturing process which innovatively combines hydroforming and hot tube gas forming of light-metal tubes of titanium, aluminium and magnesium alloys, enhanced with optimized pre-thermal treatment and temperature gradients respectively. In many forming processes of tubes made by low-formability alloys and/or with complex geometries, about 5 forming stages has to be performed to achieve the final shape, each one requiring the production of different dies and additional pre-heating steps. Within APTOS project, economic and energy savings of the overall manufacturing process (up to 30%) will be achieved by MASPERO, with the suppression of one step in the forming cycle. MASPERO will exploit in APTOS the results of on-going and previous research projects, for accelerating the innovation and market uptake of the APTOS manufacturing process, which will allow producing pieces with increased geometrical complexity. A fully operational up scaled process will be set up in Phase 2, which will lead for future pre-production series. A partnership is already supporting MASPERO in Phase 1 and some additional partners will be identified during Phase 1: Politecnico di Milano, Mechanic Department, with great and long experience in advanced forming processes, Fraunhofer IWU of Chemnitz, with a remarkable experience in hot gas forming, and CiaoTech, an European firm active in Economic services for industry. The potential market of the proposed fully optimized process is enormous as structural and functional shaped light-alloy tubes are used in all kinds of vehicles (bicycles, motorbikes, cars, trains, airplanes, helicopters) and household appliances, kitchenware and other industrial design items, where the lightweight design is a plus. Nowadays, the motorbikes sector is about 19% of Maspero total turnover, automotive 9%, trains 6%, aerospace 2%, kitchenware 3%, with lower percentages for other sectors.