Q-Guard - An intelligent process control system

Abstract

Stainless steel is a complex material and has properties that make it difficult to use in deep drawing processes. Because of its scattering material properties a robust process is difficult to achieve, resulting in the necessity to constantly adjust the drawing process. In order to produce parts at constantly high quality and to minimize scrap production, an intelligent control system, the Q-Guard system is implemented in production, covering the whole process chain from raw material to the finished part. This control system is presented in this contribution, with the main focus on the process control. This system is based on numeric simulations as well as material data, the process settings and draw-in measurements, all of them acquired in-line in production. Part of the data is used for a feedforward control for immediate good parts production, part of the data, like the draw-in, measured with an optical measurement system after the first draw, is used in a feedback loop. The layout of the process control and results from production runs will also be shown in this work.