Infeed rotary swaging is a cold forming production technique to reduce the diameter of axisymmetric components. The forming is achieved discontinuously by a series of radial strokes that are spread over the shell of the part. Due to tolerances within the rotary swaging machine, these strokes perform individually and the resulting stroke pattern is not homogeneous with regards to circumferential and longitudinal distribution. Nevertheless, in combination with the high number of performed strokes and the large contact area between the dies and the part, the external part properties, such as diameter, roundness and surface roughness, show even values along the finished part. In contrast, strength-defining internal part properties, like microstructure and residual stress components, are more sensitive to the actual pattern and temporal sequence of the individual strokes, which is investigated in this study. The impact of process fluctuations during the conventional process, which are induced by the tolerances of machine tool components, was verified by numerical simulations, physical tests and measurements of residual stress distributions at the surface and at depth. Furthermore, a method is introduced to maintain the stroke following angle ∆φ at zero by flat dies, and thus the actual pattern and temporal sequence of the strokes was homogenized. The results show that the residual stress fluctuations at the surface could be controlled and reduced. Furthermore, it is demonstrated that the depth profile of the residual stresses at a distance of 300 µm from the surface developed independently from the process fluctuations.

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In rotary swaging – an incremental cold forming production technique to reduce the diameter of axisymmetric parts – the material flow can be assumed to be predominantly axial and radial. The actual ratio of this axial and radial flow influences the mechanical properties and especially in tube forming the final geometry. It is known that during mandrel free infeed rotary swaging of tubes the wall thickness changes. The change is depending on the process parameters like incremental and cumulated strain. Hence, the ratio of axial and radial material flow changes. Consequently, the analysis of the wall thickness of rotary swaged tubes enables fundamental insight how to control the material flow direction. In this study, the infeed rotary swaging process of steel tubes with different wall thicknesses from 3 mm to 7 mm and rods were investigated with FEM under two feeding velocities. The axial and radial material flow and the resulting geometry were studied by the relative wall thickness. It could be seen that the relative wall thickness was affected by the feeding velocity as well as the initial wall thickness. The findings of the simulation were validated by rotary swaging experiments.