Apparatus for manufacturing a vehicular body panel
AssigneeHonda Giken Kogyo Kabushiki Kaisha
InventorsTeruo Kamada, Noriaki Iwanami, Masamitsu Numano, Takashi Tsuchiya
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A vehicular body panel or component part having a reinforcing backing plate reconciled or joined to a part of a blank material at a position wherein a bending formation is implemented. The backing plate has one or more apertures formed in at least one lateral row at a location equivalent to the position of the bending formation. When forming the blank material and the backing plate concurrently by a bending operation, the backing plate becomes intimately associated with the blank sheet to avoid the backing plate from locally separating from the blank material and from forming a gap relative thereto, with a resultant improved product quality.
Claims4
An apparatus for manufacturing a blank material for use as a vehicular body panel, the apparatus comprising:
- upper and lower blanking die halves including cutter segments and die segments and relatively movable toward and away from each other to simultaneously blank out a blank material from a sheet metal and a backing plate from a scrap portion of the sheet metal;
- backing plate transfer means for transferring the backing plate, which is formed by blanking with the cutter segments and the die segments, from a blanking area to a mounting area both defined within the upper and lower blanking die halves;
- and
- backing plate joining means for joining the backing plate and the blank material together at the mounting area.
An apparatus for producing a vehicle body panel blank reinforced with a backing plate, comprising:
- (a) a blanking press having a cooperating pair of upper and lower blanking dies relatively movable toward and away from each other to simultaneously cut out a vehicle body panel blank and a backing plate respectively from a sheet metal and from a scrap portion of the sheet metal which is produced when the vehicle body panel blank is cut, the blanking press having a blanking station where the backing plate is cut, and a joining station where the vehicle body panel blank and the backing plate are joined together;
- (b) transfer means incorporated in the lower blanking die and operative in synchronism with operation of the blanking press for automatically transferring the backing plate from the blanking station to the joining station;
- and
- (c) joining means incorporated in the blanking press for joining the backing plate and the vehicle body panel blank at the joining station while the upper and lower blanking dies are brought together.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.