What is it?

The name "hydroforming" is used for many technologies and forming apparatus, sometimes very different each other, which share, according to the name, the usage of a fluid as fundamental element of the forming process.
Typically with the hydroforming process a sheet or a tube is cold formed using the force coming from a fluid at very high pressure and acting from the inside or the outside of the part. Such force works as a punch, pushing the sheet or the tube to adhere against the die. You can find here, two typical examples of hydroforming.

The hydroforming technology can be applied to any material which allows plastic stamping. The applications of the tools must be carefully engineered for each product, according to shape and material. The mechanical characteristics of the basic material are, as in all other forming technologies, a limit which cannot be trespassed.

Advantages

The hydroforming technology has many advantages. The main of them are:

  1. Possibility to obtain complex forms, even with undercuts, which cannot be obtained by the traditional forming processes; it allows to reduce the number of parts of an item and thus avoid difficult assembling operations.
  2. In the case of assembling by soldering, their elimination improves the mechanical and technological features of the product. In case of specific structural items the absence of soldering can decrease the costs of parts control to detect welding crack.
  3. It allows a wider range of forms, giving to the designers the possibility to better express their creativity. The lack of welding or joints improves the product aesthetically.
  4. In most of the cases the use of the fluid element as part of the tool reduces the total costs of the forming dies. This is an important advantage in case of small quantities.

Innovation

The Engineering & Design division is constantly spurred by customers’ requirements to find new ideas for the hydroforming technology. PPED is steadily investing in research and developments both to have a more flexible process, economically suitable for small quantities, and to study new special solutions to solve forming issues which cannot be realized with the traditional hydroforming processes. Some of these highly innovative solutions will be patented.

The products