Century, Inc. News

New Sweep Stand Product at Century Rollforming

Century’s rollforming division has developed and applied for a patent on a sweep stand fixture for sweeping rollformed parts. Sweeping is a technique to put a constant radius into a part after the cross section is rollformed and before cutting the part to length. Sweeping is a common requirement in the automotive industry for parts such as roof bows, windshield roof headers, door frames, window glass guides and bumper impact bars. Sweeping is also required in non-automotive parts such as screen door frames and window screen frames.

Century’s new sweep fixture is tooled specific to each job with a series of blocks that have the cross sectional profile of the part machined into them. These blocks are usually made from Ampco 18 bearing bronze. The material progresses through a series of these blocks to progressively form the sweep radius into the part. Simple cross sections only require three stations; more complex parts require five or seven stations. Parts are swept in one or two planes. An example of a two plane compound sweep would be the radius required for an automotive roof header that must follow the arc of the roof from right to left in a vertical plane and also the arc of the windshield right to left in a horizontal plane. Century Rollforming just shipped a sweep unit to sweep 130 ksi minimum tensile, high strength low alloy steel to make roof headers for Chrysler products.

A patent has been applied for the unique adjustment capability of Century’s sweep fixture. Each station is independently adjustable in all three spatial dimensions accurately and precisely with true position mechanical readouts, making it easy to repeat a previous set up.

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