Hot Metal Gas Forming - The Next Generation Process for Manufacturing Vehicle Structure Components

Hot Metal Gas Forming is an innovative metal forming technique with the potential to leapfrog conventional metal forming techniques of structural steel components for automotive and aerospace industry. HMGF is an outgrowth of superplastic forming (SPF) and hot blow forming (HBF) techniques that the aerospace industry developed to form aluminum and titanium structures. The goal of this program is to develop the HMGF process and prove its production readiness for wide spread use in the Automotive and Aerospace industries by proving process robustness. An early process concept is shown below.