Over the last five years Henrob has been cultivating the automotive (self piercing rivet) business and has developed the magazine concept to feed self pierce rivets in a high volume riveting environment. BIW manufacturing and CIW manufacturing ( cab in white ) on aluminium structures typically look at Henrob self piercing rivets in the first instance. Henrob self-piercing rivets are seen as the bench mark in the industry.
Automotive riveting is not a new concept, Audi pioneered high volume riveting in the early 1990’s. Self-piercing is the first choice for Audi, Jaguar and BMW when considering aluminium vehicles.
Henrobs self piercing rivet is unique in the market place and has been adopted across a range of automotive components not just Body In White ( BIW ) projects. Sunroof and moon roof applications commonly use a self pierce rivet in sunroof manufacturing and moon roof manufacturing.
Another common application for self piercing process is bonnet manufacturing or hood manufacturing for the US people, or trunk lid manufacturing if you come from Asia. The likes of Jaguar, Landrover, DC, Hyundia and many other well know vehicle manufactures utilise low weight closers ie. Bonnets, hoods, trunk lids, boot lids, doors, window winders, sunroofs, air bags, seats, heat shields and many other applications.
Hood, bonnet and trunk lid applications have even migrated down to the likes of the Renault Cleo. Henrob see the US market as the next biggest market were closers will be manufactured in aluminium, trunks being the top of the list.
Self piercing riveting ( SPR ) is not just restricted to the convention automotive industry. Henrob self pierce riveting are used across a range of transportation industries whether that is on buses, coaches, snowmobiles, boats, seating on aeroplanes or even used in the tool boxes supplied with these vehicles. As an example Thomas Built Bus ( TBB ) in North America have extensive use of self pierce. A self piercing rivet can be used in trailer manufacturing and many modern trailers use self-piercing rivets. A single trailer can have 100’s of
self-pierce rivets inserted into the structure.
A similar situation has occurred in caravan manufacturing, but there has been a slower up take of self pierce riveting in caravans and recreational vehicle ( RV ) market. Henrob self-piercing rivet ( HSPR ) will start to become common place in the caravan market over the coming years
"Self-piercing riveting (SPR) has become an important alternative joining technique for the automotive applications of aluminum sheets. Most existing SPR machines use electrical motors to drive a rivet into the sheets. A significant amount of research has been conducted to improve an SPR joint's strength by increasing the mechanical interlock. In this paper, a new process is presented using gunpowder to drive the riveting process. A joint formed using the new process has different geometric characteristics from one created using a conventional system. The tensile-shear, cross-tension, fatigue, and impact performances of self-piercing riveted joints using the new device are compared to those of spot-welded joints on aluminum sheets. The experiment has proven that the new SPR joints have provided a similar or higher strength than resistance spot welds." ©2006 American Society of Mechanical Engineers
