A UK manufacturer of pressings and assemblies has signalled its intentions to be a world leader in lightweight components by investing in a new process.

SDE Technology, which prior to a recent rebrand was known as Salop Design and Engineering, is the first company in Europe to hold a production licence for Hot Form Quench (HFQ), a hot-forming process that produces high-strength aluminium parts for use in the automotive, aerospace and renewable energy sectors.
This new technology gives designers the freedom to create parts that offer significant weight savings, yet still deliver higher structural strength, with improved formability in 6000 and 7000 series alloys, which cannot be formed cold. In some instances, the process can also reduce multiple part counts to just one.
The initial investment of £1m in 2019 enables the laser profiling of HFQ blanks, with a multi-million pound investment scheduled to be in place at the company’s Shrewsbury facility over the next 18 months.
“This is a real game changer for our business and industry as a whole,” says Richard Homden, CEO of SDE Technology. “Thanks to HFQ we can now offer new and existing customers a lightweight solution for
making complex parts in one pressing, reducing weight, time to manufacture and cost in the process.
“HFQ was developed by Impression Technologies (ITL), who industrialised research by Birmingham University and Imperial College London,” he adds. “You simply cannot form this high-strength aluminium in any other way, unless you use a super plastic forming [SPF] process. Even then, SPF makes one part every
15 to 20 minutes, whereas the cycle time for our technology is one part every 15 to 20 seconds. That is a design and manufacturing dream.”
For further information https://www.sde.technology/

Earlier this year, the Japan-headquartered Unipres group, which supplies many of the world’s major automotive manufacturers with pressed car body parts, took delivery of two complete press hardening lines from AP&T. The first of the two lines began operations at Unipres’s UK manufacturing centre in Sunderland at the beginning of 2020, while the second line was delivered to the group’s French plant in Biache Saint Vaast in March.

“AP&T’s reliable technology, extensive experience of press hardening and ability to provide quick service are some of the most important reasons underlying our decision to collaborate with them,” says senior vice president of the Unipres Advanced Engineering Development Centre, Ryoji Maeda.
AP&T technical sales manager Peter Robisch adds: “We were naturally delighted to be entrusted with producing complete solutions that meet Unipres’s high demands for short cycle times and extensive automation. Both of the lines have advanced technology. For example, all of the tooling and gripper changes are fully automated. The lines are also equipped with sophisticated press monitoring, which ensures a consistently high level of quality for the manufactured parts.”
AP&T’s business model – ‘One Responsible Partner’ – which entails the company taking full responsibility for all of the production equipment and having all of the required expertise in-house, also played an important role in the procurement. A further vital aspect was AP&T’s global operations, which allow the company to offer service and spare parts supply wherever customers operate.
To date, AP&T has delivered and installed over 120 press hardening lines all over the world.
For further information www.aptgroup.com