Demand is constantly increasing for short type development times, faster responses to market demand and more niche products and special vehicles in smaller batch sizes and with shorter life cycles. These demands all ratchet up the pressure on the automobile industry and its suppliers, requiring them to cut investment costs and equipment throughput times yet further. However, this does not simply mean optimizing the entire parts design process, from prototyping right through to series production. Planners of pressed and shell parts now frequently have to limit the number of machining operations to four (and certainly no more than six) and further reduce the cost of investing in equipment by using of standardised bought-in parts.

Modern metal-forming equipment, such as transfer presses and progressive presses for large parts, which have mechanized components inside, demand more intelligent tool concepts that guarantee greater process reliability and efficiency. And that is not all: parts should only be allowed to tip over under certain, limited circumstances and the tool design must take account of the complex and inconvenient contours associated with mechanisation, particularly in the shapes of slides and drivers.

These stringent criteria have led to the development of new machine tool engineering and design methods. To help meet the new requirements, offset driving mechanisms with hydraulic "master/slave systems" can offer a number of options for implementing cutting and forming functions in any direction. Effective directions that, in the past, have been achieved using mechanical slides and drivers can now be implemented much more easily and economically using this principle (figure 1).

Offset slides and drivers can now be omitted and costs can be cut by as much as 30% for some applications. The master cylinder is positioned at a suitable and accessible point in the machine, regardless of the location of the slave cylinder. The two cylinders are connected by pipes, or preferably hoses, in order to create a closed system that works according to the displacement principle.

Autonomous Hydraulic System Fibro Ha