Strong! Efficient! Low cost! Energy saving! Ecological! Honda’s own hot
Under the hot stamping process, the stamping work is conducted after the steel is heated until it is red hot and malleable, which makes hard and difficult-to-mold steel sheet easy to mold. Then by cooling the steel sheet after molding, it becomes even stronger using the same principle as tempering the blade of a knife. In general, this allows molding of steel sheet that is twice as strong as mild steel sheet, and makes the product five times stronger than mild steel sheet by heat treatment after molding. For the N BOX, we succeeded in creating a 1.0 mm thick component that would have to be 1.6 mm thick using conventional methods.
Honda Engineering Co. has developed the world’s first internal die trimming process and introduced this into hot stamping. Because conventional hot stamping requires a long time for heating, the heating furnace must incorporate large equipment, and the cooling after molding takes 10-20 seconds, it can only be used to produce about three sheets per minute. Moreover, the excess portions have to be trimmed using lasers after molding, so the process requires large amounts of electricity. It is a high-cost molding method requiring high capital investment.
The world’s first internal die trimming manufacturing method developed by Honda Engineering reduces those costs, to promote the use of hot stamping. This new approach trims excess materials and drills holes while molding, and applies cooling water directly into the die to realize shorter cooling time, higher efficiency and energy savings.
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