Manufacturing Process Design of Aluminum Alloy Bolt

The use of aluminum alloy parts in the automotive industry has been increasing recently due to its low weight compared with steel to improve fuel efficiency. Companies in the auto parts' manufacturing sector are expected to meet the government's strict environmental regulations. In this study, manufacturing process of aluminum alloy bolt has been designed from forming to heat treatment. Bolt forming process is composed of cold forging for body and rolling for thread. In this study only cold forging process is considered by employing the finite element method. In the cold forging process, preform shape was designed and damage value was considered for die design. Two steps of forging process has been developed by the simulation and a prototype was manugactured accordingly. As a final process, solution heat treatment and aging process was employed. A final prototype was found to meet the required specifications of tensile strength and dimension.