Requirements for Welding Process Equipment in R&D and Manufacturing of New Energy Vehicles

As the country’s attention to new energy vehicles (NEVs) continues to grow, an increasing number of new and established automakers have stepped up investment in the R&D and manufacturing of NEVs, which has put forward new requirements for welding tooling.

Currently, the overall vehicle market is highly competitive, with a wide range of new vehicle models launched annually and extremely short update cycles. Traditional dedicated tooling fixtures are no longer suitable for production and manufacturing. The problems with traditional dedicated tooling are as follows:

1.Repeated investment costs in tooling;

2.Time consumed in the design and manufacturing of tooling;

3.Difficulty in reusing tooling for products of different models;

4.Storage issues of idle tooling.

The above problems are more prominent in vehicle R&D departments and units, where product variability is even greater. When seeking solutions to these problems, designers and manufacturers in many automakers have begun to focus on 3D flexible tooling fixtures.

Definition of 3D Flexible Tooling Fixtures

3D flexible tooling fixtures are assembled from a set of universal modules with standardized, serialized, and normalized structures and sizes. These modules can be reused multiple times. According to the type, size, and processing requirements of the workpiece, relevant modules are selected and assembled in a certain procedure to obtain the required tooling fixtures.

Production practice shows that compared with one-time-use dedicated fixtures, 3D flexible tooling fixtures have the following characteristics:

1.High versatility, flexibility, and a wide range of applications, which can significantly shorten the production preparation cycle.

2.Low cost, which can save a large amount of labor and material resources and reduce the consumption of metal materials.

3.Greatly reducing the warehouse area required for storing dedicated fixtures and simplifying management work.

Nowadays, it is widely used in multiple fields such as steel structures, manufacturing of various vehicles, construction machinery, frames and boxes, pressure vessels, robotic welding, sheet metal processing, metal furniture, equipment assembly, industrial pipelines, and testing systems.

Application of 3D Flexible Tooling Fixtures in the NEV Field

With the development of NEVs in recent years, flexible tooling has played an increasingly important role in the R&D and manufacturing process of NEVs.

In the previous design of dedicated tooling, designers needed to spend a lot of time and energy on design and drawing. Now, except for a few specially customized modules, designers can select from the standard module library of flexible tooling and quickly and conveniently conduct tooling design on computers. This greatly reduces the workload of designers.

When used by on-site workers, workers can adjust the position and quantity of module components according to the actual on-site situation. When the workpiece design changes or the production workpiece is replaced, the tooling can be quickly reconfigured on-site. At the same time, due to the reuse of tooling, the demand for space for storing tooling fixtures is significantly reduced.

There are also diverse ways to use flexible tooling fixtures in the production and manufacturing process. For example, a certain automotive R&D company in Shanghai currently applies 3D flexible tooling to the R&D, design, and trial production of core components of NEVs. In addition to using the digital model of tooling modules for the general design of tooling in the early stage, most processes of small-batch trial production of samples are also carried out on flexible tooling. For parts that cannot be satisfied with standardized modules, self-made non-standard parts are combined with standardized flexible tooling to meet the overall processing technology of the workpiece. Besides using flexible tooling as a conventional welding worktable, the basic platform of flexible tooling is also fixed on friction stir welding equipment for use, thereby making up for the deficiency of insufficient positioning and pressing parts on the friction stir welding equipment. In addition, due to the high precision of flexible tooling, the R&D company also uses the basic platform and some modules of flexible tooling as testing tooling.

Conclusion

Relying on its own advantages, 3D flexible tooling fixtures have played a significant role in NEV manufacturing. Of course, not only in the NEV industry but also in other industries, 3D flexible tooling fixtures have an irreplaceable role. It is believed that with the rapid development of welding technology, the role of 3D flexible tooling fixtures will become increasingly important.