Vari-Form Demonstrates Hydroforming Advantages at AUTOSTEEL's "Great Designs In Steel" Conference

TROY, Mich., July 9, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Vari-Form, the industry leader in Pressure-Sequence Hydroforming, delivered a comprehensive demonstration of their proprietary hydroforming technology for the Steel Market Development Institute's Great Designs In Steel conference on May 16, 2012.

The presentation, titled "Hydroform Intensive Body Structure" was delivered by Dean Gericke, Vari-Form Engineering Manager. Gericke noted that hydroforming has been employed for a number of automotive applications such as engine cradles for years. Today, Vari-Form is expanding the use of hydroforming into safety-critical structural applications such as roof rails, body side structures, and front and rear impact zones.

In these applications, Vari-Form's hydroformed assemblies demonstrated consistently lower part costs and tooling costs, consistently lower weight, and equivalent or superior impact and NVH performance over state-of-the-art high strength stamped parts.

"The Vari-Form presentation clearly demonstrated an expanding range of automotive applications for hydroforming," said a conference attendee, an engineer with an international steel company. "And when we see average part cost savings of 11%, tooling savings of 14%, and weight savings of 7.3% – with no loss in structural performance – this is a technology that bears close consideration by any manufacturer."

With the global push for lower cost, lower weight and greater fuel efficiency, OEMs are pursuing these goals across a number of design, engineering and manufacturing fronts. Vari-Form's Pressure-Sequence Hydroforming can deliver significant benefits to these manufacturers, and the company continues to develop the technology with investigations into higher-strength materials and advanced geometries.

Visit the Vari-Form web site at www.vari-form.com and click "What's New."

About Vari-Form

Headquartered in Troy, Michigan, with production facilities in Strathroy, Ontario, Canada, Reynosa, Mexico, and Liberty, Missouri, Vari-Form is the originator of structural automotive hydroforming, Vari-Form's technology is used to manufacture more than 6 million parts a year worldwide. Vari-Form began volume production using their patented, production-validated Pressure Sequence Hydroforming (PSH) process in 1990. Vari-Form is the industry leader, with more than 85 million parts produced to date.

SOURCE Vari-Form