Cold forming of narrow tolerances demonstrated for truck wheel bolts.

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Cold forming of narrow tolerances demonstrated for truck wheel bolts. Dr. Gunther Hartmann Research & Development KAMAX-Werke, R. Kellermann GmbH & Co. KG

Introduction
Cost saving is an ongoing challenge in the automotive industry. Reductions in prices of more than 20 % over the last 5 Years are common for automotive suppliers. For the fastener industry, where total costs are mainly determined by material and labor costs, there is a limited range of possibilities to adopt the challenge. For even simple parts like fasteners according to ISO or DIN standards, highly sophisticated high volume production processes exist with little opportunities for cost saving. Facing the world wide competition these parts are economically difficult to produce in Europe any longer. However cold forming is a very efficient technology in comparison to machining processes such as grinding or turning. Higher production rates with reduced consumption of material are the major advantages while limited capabilities for narrow tolerances and somewhere restricted shapes are the major limitations. Further development has been initiated to overcome these drawbacks. In the following it will be demonstrated by means of an example, how the advantages of the technology can be used successfully.

State of the Art

Truck wheel bolts are high volume applications. Typically these parts are pressed into wheel flanges using interference fits, keeping the bolts in place while handling the flanges and axles during production and during the assembly of the wheel. An anti-twist feature has to ensure, that the loosening torque of the nuts during wheel changes can be held. Two different designs exist to meet these requirements. With the knurled bolt the anti-twist protection is achieved by a knurled section of the shank. An undercut beneath the bolts head or a chamfer on the bore is necessary. The latter one generates additional machining costs and demands a larger head of the bolt to maintain the pressure between the bolts head and the flange at acceptable values. The parts can be completely cold formed. The net shape of the bolt is cold headed while the knurled section is formed in a second operation by a rolling process similar to thread rolling. It is performed after heat treatment. Heat treatment operation should be processed with a carburizing atmosphere to achieve the required hardness of the teeth. This leads to one of the disadvantages of this design. The hardened teeth cause plastic deformations of the bore during assembly of the bolt. The parts cannot be reused once they have been disassembled. To overcome this problem, parts with oversized knurl dimensions have to be produced and held on stock for the in-the-field service, adding additional logistical costs. Moreover this design can not be used with aluminium flanges. To overcome the disadvantages of the knurled bolt, a ground bolt design was developed. An interference fit fixes the bolts in the bore while the anti-twist protection is achieved by a flattening at one side of the head. This feature can be trimmed during the cold heading process without significant additional costs. However it requires an appropriate design of the flange. Solutions for the flange design are known, where no additional machining operations are necessary to achieve the appropriate shapes, dimensions and tolerances. Again the net shape of the bolt can be cold headed. During a second step, the parts run through a standard heat treatment followed by the machining of the interference fit section. Due to the required tolerances, this section has to be ground after the undercut has been formed. A stock allowance of 0.1 mm for the shank diameter has to be kept for the grinding operation during cold forming. Obviously this increases the consumption of material. During the last processing step, thread rolling is performed before surface treatment.

Cold forming of narrow tolerances demonstrated for truck wheel bolts.

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According to the application in general, this design addresses most of the drawbacks of the knurled bolt. The purely elastic deformation of the interference fit allows the bolts to be reuses even if they have been disassembled. That means, only one bolt dimension is necessary for the first application and the in-the-field service. Because of the undercut of the bolt, the corresponding bore can be machined without a chamfer minimizing the diameter of the bolt head but maintaining the under-head surface contact area. The lack of sharp teeth enables the use of this design even for aluminium flanges. The major disadvantage compared to the knurled bolt is the cost for this design. The additional grinding increases the cost for the bolt by approximately 20 % compared to the knurled version.

New Approach
In order to keep the advantages of this design, two questions had to be answered. Is it possible to process the interference fit section using cold forming processes with the required accuracy and what must an appropriate design then look like? In order to solve the problem, we had to answer the second question first and depending on the answer to solve the first problem. Cold heading is not capable of keeping the required tolerances. Moreover the ability to form undercuts is very restricted. On the other hand, thread rolling is a well known technology. By radial deformation, the material is forced to flow partially backwards forming larger diameters. However the accuracy of the tread rolling operation is not sufficient enough for interference fits. In order to achieve the required tolerance, a second, precise rolling operation had to follow, where the outer diameter of the previously rolled profile is deformed between flat tools acting as a calibration process. At the same time, the resulting shape incorporates an undercut section between head and profile, which is welcome for the present application. Depending on the application, the chamfer at the bore can be dropped. To apply these processes on the wheel bolt, the interference section had to be divided up into smaller areas. During a first attempt, a design with rings was tested. The interference section consists of a number of rings like a thread having no pitch. The process flow then consists of cold heading of the bolt, rolling the rings with standard accuracy, heat treatment, calibration at high accuracy and finally thread rolling. Depending on the requirements additional coating steps may be added. Studies have been performed on the capability of the calibration process. The results demonstrated in principal the ability to maintain the required tolerances. But the design shows significant disadvantages during the assembly of the bolt. While pressing the bolt into the bore, a strict angular alignment of the bolt with respect to the bore has to be observed. Slight deviations in the angular alignment cause scrapes within the bore caused by the sharp edges of the rings.

Properties of the Helical Wheel Bolt

This effect can be avoided using a helical design instead of the rings. The interference fit is formed like a multiple thread with three lead threads. The major difference compared to a standard thread is an increased width at the thread's crest and bottom. To achieve the required tolerances, the helical section is calibrated like the rings in the previous design. Different to the ring design, no sharp edge has to pass the bore, while the bolt is pressed into the bore. Moreover the end of the helical section is somewhat formed like a cone featuring a self adjusting feature during assembly. This supports the assembly process with respect to the angular alignment. The helical wheel bolt can be used interchanging and exchanging with its ground predecessor. This includes the in-the-field service. The percentage of area supporting the interference fit is more than 50 %. Tests have been carried out on forces, which are necessary for assembly/disassembly of the bolts. The results are satisfactory and meet the customers demands. Finally as a result of improving the manufacturing processes the bolts are now produced using the following procedure: the net shape is formed using a cold heading machine with attached thread rolling facility for rolling the helical section. After a standard heat treatment procedure the parts are

Cold forming of narrow tolerances demonstrated for truck wheel bolts.

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precisely calibrated and finally the thread is rolled. Both steps are performed using two directly coupled CNC rolling machines. A process capability of better than 20 m for the calibration process could be achieved. The integrated process control automatically separates defective parts. This increases process quality for these safety-related parts.

Conclusions
Traditionally narrow tolerances e.g. for interference fits are produced using grinding processes. However cold forming is a very efficient technology, especially for high volume parts. By consequently adopting the design due to the demands of cold forming and further refining the calibrating technology to achieve process capability even for narrow tolerances, cost reductions could be achieved with the same or enhanced properties compared to their predecessors. This has been demonstrated for a wheel bolt. However the technology can be applied to other applications such as connecting rod bolts as well.