WEMA and Fraunhofer IWU cooperate for the future of the hydrogen economy

The task: Production technology for profile rollers

High-pre­ci­sion pro­file rolling tools are required for their high-rate pro­duc­tion by hol­low roll emboss­ing. The aim of the research project is the devel­op­ment and real­iza­tion of pro­duc­tion processes (machine, tools, sys­tems) and machin­ing tech­nolo­gies for the man­u­fac­ture of these tools using inno­v­a­tive process com­bi­na­tions of machin­ing (milling, grind­ing, pol­ish­ing) and laser ablation.

In addi­tion to pro­duc­tive and cost-effec­tive tool pro­duc­tion, the high­est qual­ity require­ments in terms of shape and rough­ness must be ensured. This requires repro­ducible work­piece clamp­ing. For this and for multi-stage and adap­tive process con­trol, process-related qual­i­fied mea­sure­ment tech­nol­ogy and tech­nolo­gies are required.

Other project objec­tives include the design of a com­bined machine for machin­ing and laser abla­tion, the end-to-end dig­i­tal­iza­tion of the man­u­fac­tur­ing process and the com­po­nent, and the con­sid­er­a­tion of the trans­fer­abil­ity of the tech­nolo­gies to other applications.

The challenge: hollow embossing tools

The imple­men­ta­tion of ambi­tious energy and cli­mate poli­cies requires a com­pre­hen­sive trans­for­ma­tion of our energy sys­tems and resource use. Hydro­gen and its effi­cient pro­duc­tion by elec­trol­y­sers and use by fuel cells play a major role in this. The core com­po­nent of both sys­tems is the bipo­lar plate, the pro­duc­tion of which is time-con­sum­ing and cost-inten­sive. There is sig­nif­i­cant poten­tial for sav­ings here through high-rate pro­duc­tion processes, for which the devel­op­ment of pro­duc­tion engi­neer­ing and tech­nolo­gies and the estab­lish­ment of cor­re­spond­ing pro­duc­tion capac­i­ties are required.

The aim of the project is, on the one hand, the process devel­op­ment for the eco­nomic pro­duc­tion of high-pre­ci­sion form­ing tools for bipo­lar plates by com­bin­ing inno­v­a­tive machin­ing and laser abla­tion processes in opti­mized process chains. On the other hand, the aim is the simul­ta­ne­ous con­sid­er­a­tion of the form­ing processes by val­i­da­tion tests and directly result­ing require­ments for tool pro­duc­tion (e.g. qual­ity char­ac­ter­is­tics for shape and rough­ness, mate­r­ial hardness).

The result is an over­all process analy­sis for the pro­duc­tion of form­ing tools based on the bound­ary con­di­tions of tool pro­duc­tion (e.g. process lim­its, pro­duc­tiv­ity, costs) and simul­ta­ne­ous detail­ing and spec­i­fi­ca­tion of the form­ing tools and processes through val­i­da­tion processes

This method enables the robust and pro­duc­tive man­u­fac­ture of bipo­lar plates for energy tech­nol­ogy sys­tems. It can also be trans­ferred to other appli­ca­tions in plant and med­ical technology.