Jiuli, headquartered in China, awarded SMS group the final acceptance certificate for putting a fully automated forging line into operation. The hydraulic radial forging machine has a press force of 18 MN for each of the four press cylinders, which allows sophisticated materials for the aerospace industry to be forged. In addition, the plant includes two fully synchronized 8-ton forging manipulators and equipment for loading and unloading as well as for cutting, marking and cooling of forged bars. To achieve high process-efficiency levels while at the same time observing the technological parameters required for forging high-temperature materials, the handling manipulators used for automated unloading of heated ingots from the furnace are integrated into the line control system.

The supplied forging line is equipped with a condition monitoring system that records all target and actual parameters during the forging process. The system enables a data analysis of the machine condition and operating data, and it can be used for fault diagnostics, process optimization and quality assurance.