Open AccessThe article raises an issue to enhance technological forging capabilities on the known knuckle joint presses. It provides an illustrated overview of main design types of presses with crank-knuckle, toggle-knuckle, and knuckle joint mechanisms. The article also shows the advantages of the modernization way and improvement just of the active press equipment in terms of quality-to-price ratio, for example, as compared to the similar new foreign press equipment.
It gives an overview of features, which provide forging processes owing to kinetic energy accumulated with the moving parts of the known designs of the knuckle joint presses depending on the drive actuating mechanism. Focused attention is drawn to forging on the knuckle joint presses for a time of contact with a work piece to be comparable with the duration of the work piece deformation process on hydraulic forging hammers. This allows us to forge thin-wall products with process automation compared to the forging hammers.
Analysis of accumulating processes of kinetic energy by the moving parts of the knuckle joint presses has shown that presses driven by hydraulic cylinders or two screw hydraulic cylinder are the most optimal for technological operations as evidenced by references to domestic and foreign invention certificates and patents. The article presents disadvantages of forging on presses with hydraulic or pneumatic drive. It is a dependence of the deformation force, caused, mainly, by a force of the drive cylinder. The article gives linear movement rate quantities of press moving members depending on the drives of the actuating mechanism. Based on the above analysis of the features to manufacture work pieces on the knuckle joint presses, the article gives the rationale for the relevance of forging in a short period of time, provided that the moving parts of the press accumulate the required kinetic energy. This can be achieved only through modernization and improvement of forging equipment designs, in particular, using modern industrial hydraulics facilities, software and hardware systems for industrial automation.