A technical note on the development of prototype CNC variable vertical section extrusion machine

Saving resource and energy is important in the future as well as in these days. Weight saving of structural parts is important in manufacturing field. Aluminum tubes and channels, which are formed by extrusion, are applied to structural parts for reduction of the products' weight. It will have advantage for reducing the weight of the part to vary a cross section of a part which corresponds to the actual load in the axial direction. Extruded tubes' and channels' cross sections are constant in the axial direction by conventional extrusion method. These tubes and channels need other processes to vary the cross section in the axial direction. Thus, applications of these parts are limited by high cost. If the cross section of the part is variable by only extrusion, application of extruded tubes and channels will increase. Therefore, authors have invented and made a new prototype CNC extrusion machine which can control the thickness of rectangular bar. Using the extrusion machine, the experiment has been performed. The characteristics and possibility of this extrusion has been experimentally studied in this paper.