Business ProfiIe

Summit Auto Body (SAB) (www. summitautogroup.com) ndustry established in 1986 is Thailand's largest
supplier of pressed automotive parts and supplies pressings to most of the major car companies. The Tool
Room produces around 500 Tools annually which are large and medium in size using latest CNC
machines and is supported by a well equipped Tool Design department using the latest software's for
CAD/CAM/CAE.
Overview
Using Altair HyperForm, Thailand based Summit Auto Body (SAB) was able to simulate the forming
process accurately and significantly reduce development time. Leveraging HyperForm's sheet metal
forming solution, SAB designed the validation process and press tool design covering the vital areas of
virtual prototyping/testing, which, in turn, reduced the time-consuming manual process drastically.
CASE STUDY
HyperForm Sheet Metal Forming Solution Enabled Virtual
Tool Design and Tryout Improves Accuracy and
Robustness of Tool Design and Manufacturing Process
'The investment in
HyperForm is a step in
the company's drive to
become a global leader
in the development
and production of
high-quality
automotive
components".
Marketing Department
SAB, Thailand
Figure 1
Cross Member Rear Floor
ChaIIenge
Quality of components are always under pressure to meet the
stringent requirements for a vast clientele, and compete in the
fiercely competitive tooling development market. The entire
forming tool development process had to be improved by
incorporating simulated driven development process which
helps to bring out a tool, which is reliable and accurate in the
shortest time possible. SAB identified their press tool design
and validation process was a manual process which could be
supplemented with a simulation based virtual prototyping and
tryout process. Therefore, Altair HyperForm software was
introduced and used for a complete virtual tryout analysis on
the cross member Rear Floor in order to optimize the
number of drawstages. The primary objective was to improve
accuracy and predictability of tool tryout process, by trying out
different variations on blank holding pressure, bead pattern
and profiles with which SABsucceeded in their target.
Altair Engineering: United States, Brazil, Canada, Australia, China, France, Germany, ndia, taly, Japan, Korea, Sweden, United Kingdom
SoIution
The Altair HyperForm Metal forming Simulation based Virtual Prototyping and
Validation Process was implemented to help improve accuracy of blank
development calculations, die design, tryout and optimization of tool-design.
Benefits
HyperForm solution helped SAB re-design the tooling for the cross member in a
record time of 1 day and comprised of 3 computer iterations as against a manual
exercise which could have taken 2-3 months involving a lot of physical trials. The
world class processes led to improvement of the quality of their manufacturing
process and tool-design and product delivery quality.
Figure 2

Cross Member Formability Plot
Figure 3
Cross Member Formability Analysis Plot

Cross Member New Binder Wrap Design
Figure 4
Altair Engineering ndia Pvt. Ltd. +91 80 4178 5500 www.altair.com marketing@india.altair.com
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