The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Oct. 02, 2018
Filed:
Jun. 16, 2014
Ford Global Technologies, Llc, Dearborn, MI (US);
S. George Luckey, Jr., Dearborn, MI (US);
David John Hill, Ann Arbor, MI (US);
Peter A. Friedman, Ann Arbor, MI (US);
Christopher John May, Novi, MI (US);
Stephen Kernosky, Livonia, MI (US);
Andrey M. Ilinich, Novi, MI (US);
Ford Global Technologies, LLC, Dearborn, MI (US);
Abstract
A value stream process or method for forming vehicle rails from extruded aluminum tubes includes the steps of extruding an aluminum tube and hydroforming the extruded aluminum tube into a vehicle rail. More specifically, the method includes extruding the aluminum tube, bending the aluminum tube, preforming the aluminum tube, hydroforming the aluminum tube into a vehicle rail, trimming the vehicle rail to length and then artificially aging the rail followed by batch chemical pretreatment. In an alternative embodiment the artificial aging and batch chemical pretreatment processes are performed in reverse order. In either of the embodiments, localized induction annealing to recover formability may be performed between bending and preforming, between preforming and hydroforming or both.