At Toledo Metal Spinning Company we offer hydroforming services in the production of high quality parts for customers in a range of industries. Hydroforming is ideal for critical forms with complex shapes, demanding surface finish, and material thickness uniformity requirements. Known for producing minimal strain, hydroforming can be used for achieving complex or unsymmetrical geometry in one or few operations in comparison to conventional drawing or other forming processes.
We have successfully served customers in the aerospace, agricultural, automotive, building, HVAC, industrial, and manufacturing sectors, producing typical fabricated products such as exhaust parts, furnace parts, engine parts, covers and caps. This process can also produce irregular or complex shapes, as well as squares, rectangles, and round profiles. Turnaround times are 2 to 4 weeks for prototypes, and 1 to 2 weeks for production.
We cater to prototype, low volume, and high volume production in our specialty production shop, meeting orders from 50 to 50,000 units per year. Our experts work closely with customers to design parts to their specifications and select the optimum manufacturing process, along with offering a number of value added options including welding, secondary forming, metal finishing, engineering support, stamping, embossing, and extruded features among others. Our operations are ISO certified, meeting the highest quality and accuracy levels. For more details about our cost effective hydroform drawing services, or other available capabilities please see the table below or contact us directly.
The process of hydro-mechanical deep drawing at TMS was originally developed in the 1950’s with a boom in the technology in the 1960’s thanks to the aerospace industry. Often, the final thickness of the part is near 100% of the original blank thickness. This method of forming is ideal for critical components in materials that strain harden or are sensitive to fatigue, surface finish is critical, when welding must be avoided, material thickness must be uniform, or additional forming post-drawing is required.
The process was created to and does produce deep parts without welding and minimal straining of the material. This is accomplished with a blank held in place by a draw ring that is around a plug, and the hydraulic forming chamber lowers onto the draw ring. This hydraulic forming chamber consists of a large volume of hydraulic fluid contained by a rubber “Bladder” that stretches to help form around the part. Once the hydraulic chamber lowers onto the draw ring, the plug rises and the Bladder forms around it until it reaches the desired height. Consequently, the blank is formed around the plug geometry which determines the final part shape.
| English Units | Metric Units | |
|---|---|---|
| Max Draw (Punch) Diameter | 12.0 in | 304 mm |
| Max Part Height | 7.0 in | 177 mm |
| Max Flange Diameter* | 15.0 in | 381 mm |
| Max Blank Size, Diameter | 15.0 in | 381 mm |
| Max Blank Thickness (CRS) | 0.25 in | 6 mm |
| Min Blank Thickness | 0.02 in | 0.5 mm |
| Max Punch Force | 368 ton | 3,273 kN |
| Max Pressure | 10 ksi | 69 MPa |
| Typical Tolerance | +/- 0.020 in | +/- 0.5 mm |
| Special Tolerance (up to) | +/- 0.005 in | +/- 0.12 mm |
| Typical Production Volume | 50 – 50,000 pieces / year |