November AMP_Digital

A D V A N C E D M A T E R I A L S & P R O C E S S E S | N O V E M B E R / D E C E M B E R 2 0 1 9 2 6 Ford bought Land Rover from BMW three days later. Alcan completed its ac- quisition of Alusuisse in early June. At that point, X350 was about 32 months from Job1. Presses and equipment for a new shop on the Cas- tle Bromwich site had been ordered. The new plant’s layout included provi- sions to segregate 5xxx and 6xxx series alloys prior to recycling the stamping offal. Because that would be Jaguar’s first stamping plant, the Dutch com- pany Polynorm was hired to staff and launch the facility. Plant management returned to Jaguar after the launch. Construction of the new body shop was underway and the program was steadi- ly progressing toward production. Meanwhile, back in the U.S., the fu- ture of the D219 program as an AIV was in serious trouble: The purchase of Vol- vo 18 months earlier had provided Ford with a modern D-size platform. The idea of using a Volvo platform appealed to Rick Borsos, the D219 body engineer- ing manager, who had never liked the AIV concept. The lack of an optimized powertrain was the final straw: The weight savings of an AIV by itself could not deliver enough fuel economy im- provement to justify the added cost or development time. Compounding the problem, the word “optimization” really meant switching to engines with fewer cylinders, from a V8 to a V6 or from a V6 to an I-4. In the 1990s and early 2000s, the American public clearly associated powertrain quality with the number of cylinders. Consider that both the Audi A8 and the Jaguar X350 launched with V8s in North America—rather than the fuel efficient, 3L V6 available in Europe. By late 2000, low gas prices and the absence of a proper powertrain left D219 without significant Corporate Av- erage Fuel Economy (CAFE) benefits, and the program reverted to steel, be- coming the first North American vehi- cle to ride on a Volvo platform. The only aluminum ABS content was found in the hood. Jaguar was now officially the AIV implementation leader within Ford and it played a growing role in the compa- ny’s aluminum technology projects. The focus began to switch to lessons learned and gap assessments, result- ing in several new R&D projects. For ex- ample, X350 had been forced to accept an old-fashioned two-piece body side with two cosmetic joints to the roof. Formability dictated 5754 for the door aperture itself, but the skin of the rear fender had to be 6111 for surface ap- pearance reasons. Worse yet, the team had counted on minimal Lüders bands on the 5754 part to allow a small, visi- ble portion of the door aperture at the front pillar. Unfortunately, that proved impossible and they had to add a 6111 cover piece, creating a three-piece de- sign (Fig. 1). Multi-piece designs had long been replaced by one-piece designs in steel, improving fit-and-finish and eliminat- ing costly and tricky cosmetic joints. Therefore, one of the major projects aimed to define the design and stamp- ing guidelines that would enable a one- piece 6xxx door opening panel, similar to a steel construction. Other projects included better springback management and improv- ing craftsmanship for aluminum sheet metal parts. But the development of a new generation of stamping lubricants to replace AL070 remained a top prior- ity. The choice of laser blanking in lieu of traditional blanking dies was one of the more controversial decisions of the X350 program. In the end, it turned out to be very cost-effective: It lowered the tooling bill and fit nicely in Nach- terstedt’s process plan along with the new surface pre-treatment line and the AL070 application system. TOOLING TRYOUTS By early 2001, pressure was mounting for the stamping team to de- liver the tooling. The highly complex rear rails had been sourced to Ford’s Dearborn Tool and Die. The equivalent high-strength steel parts for the DEW98 were produced by an outside supplier using a nine-die process. For X350, the original process plan called for a much condensed five-die lineup that would fit within Jaguar’s new stamping plant. The tool tryout quickly demonstrated the foolishness of the concept, requir- ing months of old-fashioned trial and error development that eventually con- cluded with a seven-die process. The early builds used the resultant patched- up tools while a new set of production tools were being built for series pro- duction. As anticipated, overcoming springback in the complex structur- al parts turned into a lengthy series of manual iterations, each requiring sev- eral weeks. At that stage, not much had changed for the toolmakers since the pioneering days of the Panhard Dyna Z 40 years earlier: More experience, some better measuring and analysis tools, but success still entailed more art than engineering. All of these developments were taking place in the shadows of great up- heavals at Ford. The Explorer/Firestone debacle that began as a trickle in 1999 had blossomed into a major crisis by May 2001, prompting Ford to voluntarily recall the affected tires and sever a near- ly 100-year-old business relationship with Firestone. Finding an additional 13 million replacement tires became a logistical feat that spanned many months, keeping the story alive with it. Explorer sales went into a downward spiral that even a completely new mod- el could not overcome. The economic shock that accompanied the terrorist at- tacks of September 11, 2001, further un- derscored Ford’s strategic vulnerability to fuel prices. Ford entered an austerity period that contrasted with Jac Nasser’s buying spree, leading to his departure at the end of October 2001. After 18 months of development, a new lubricant had passed all lab tests and by summer of 2001 was cleared for a production trial at Ford in the U.S. The developer, Quaker Chemicals, in- stalled a temporary application system at Alcan-Kingston. The first production Fig. 1 — Three-piece body side panel with two cosmetic joints to the roof.