Roll forming, also spelled rollforming, is a continuous bending operation in which a long strip of metal sheet (usually steel coils, like PPGI, GI, PPGA, Aluminum etc) passes through sets of rolls mounted on consecutive standseach set performing only an incremental part of the bend until the desired cross-section profile is obtained. Roll forming is ideal for producing constant-profile parts with long lengths and in large quantities.

• What does a roll forming equipment consist? 

Roll Forming Machine, sometimes called cold roll forming machine, known also as roll former or cold roll former, generally includes a decoiler that is used to hold the materials (mostly steel coils), feeding guide used to adjust the alignment of materials feeding, leveler (it’s not necessary for each machine, but for material with thickness more than 1mm), punching device (not necessary for each machine but for machinery to make some finished products with holes, slots or notches), roll forming part that consists of machine base, roll stands,forming rollers (rolling tools or rolling moulds), and transmission system (chain-brackets or worm gearboxes and universal joint-shafts), cutting device that is used to cut the finished products according to required lengths and quantities, control system that controls the machine running automatically or manually and cutting the final produces, hydraulic system that provides power for cutting and/or punching device and run-out tables that could hold the finished products.

• What differs roll forming machines?

Different roll forming machines or cold roll formers will be designed and built as per specific drawings of profiles and customers’ specific requirement on machines, like automatic decoiler or manual decoiler, chain-brackets transmission or worm gear-box transmission, separate roll stands or integrated roll stands, hydrualic cutter or fly-saw cutter, manual runout tables or automatic runout tables etc.

• What standard for the production of roll forming machines?

Mostly roll forming machines exported to Europe will need CE certificate which requires safety covers mounted on roll forming machines, and saftey cover are also necessary on chain-bracket transmission part. For the cutting length of roll formers, the standard tolerance is +/-2mm, and some high-accuracy machine may require 1mm or even +/-0.5mm tolerance.

• What industries that roll forming equipment may be needed?

Rollforming is necessary for metal fabricating jobs, so different metal roll forming equipment are applied in a variety of industries, like automobile industry, steel building industry, decoration industry, transporation industry, traffic industry and metal parts production industry etc.