INTRODUCTION

Constantly increasing product quality requirements demanded by the automotive industry And the competition among suppliers, process optimization is desired. This helps to increase product quality and to reduce the costs. For the assembly production of closures (opening parts like doors and hoods) two parts are assembled together, an outer part is assembled with an inner part functions.

HEMMINGHemming is a process which consists in joining two sheet metal parts by plastic deformation. A metal sheet edge of an outer part is bent around an inner part by hemming to create a hem. This process is depicted in Figure 2. To hem closures, several technologies are available on the market, such as press-and-die, table-top, and roller hemming

Robot roller hemming was introduced at the market in the late nineties. A roller is guided along a product by a robot which bends the outer part around the inner part. This makes the process suitable for the production of many different parts, as it can simply be re-programmed for other products. In the roller hemming process a robot guides the roller along the product to bends the outer panel over the inner panel, see Figure 3.

. Complete products can be hemmed with the same roller.Also more robots can be applied in the hemming of a product to speed up the hemming process.