Roll forming is a metal manufacturing process that takes cold metal sheets or rolls and passes them through a series of rollers to bend and shape the metal into the desired cross section. Roll forming is used in a wide variety of industries, from automobiles to material handling – anywhere shaped metal parts are found – and there are many advantages to using roll forming over pressing or welding.
- Cold roll forming keeps material strength – Unlike hot roll forming, which degrades the strength of the metal during the process, cold rolled steel retains its inherent strength and will not shrink when cooled, helping it hold a tighter tolerance.
- Roll forming allows many inline processes – When designing the roll formed part, many additional value-add processes can be done in-line such as punching holes. A cut off die breaks the rolled metal into lengths and helps ensure that the final shape is correct.
- Roll forming uses one set of tools to make many lengths – Once you have a set of rollers that create the desired shape, you can run parts that have the same shape but varying lengths on the same set of tooling. The engineers at Roller Die can also handle parts with varying punch patterns, allowing multiple parts to split the same tooling costs.
- Roll forming creates uniform parts with tight tolerance – The nature of the roll forming process, consistently applied force to bend metal into a particular shape ensures that parts are consistent. Roller Die + Forming can hold industry standard tolerances and, in some cases, even tighter tolerances.
- Roll forming keeps labor costs and waste low – While there is labor involved in the roll forming process, labor costs are lower than other forms of shaping metal since the machines are creating parts at a higher rate. Further, the roll forming process is very low waste with the vast majority of the metal going into the finished parts. Together, this means that roll forming is a cost effective manufacturing method for metal parts.
If you’re interested in learning more about roll forming and the other custom metal shaping services offered by Roller Die, reach out to one of our experience salespeople. They can quickly help you determine whether roll forming or one of our other services can help and get you started on getting a quote.
