Development of a Tele-Operative Control for the Incremental Tube Forming Process and Its Integration into a Learning Environment

A deficient access to experimental equipment leads to the usage of remote labs to improve engineering education and open experiments for every student location- and time-independent. The usage of a tele-operative controlled industrial bending process in lecture combines theoretical learning contents with practical experiences. Lecturers can make experiments in interaction with the students, who are able to assist in choosing the process values. The chosen and presented bending process is the incremental tube forming process that uses in contrast to many ordinary bending processes targeted the superposition of stresses. By superposing of stresses, in this process for example a tube bending and a tube spinning process, several fundamental process characteristics can be observed and integrated into lectures to visualize the theoretical fundamentals behind. Incremental tube forming combines the tube spinning process, which affects the diameter of the tube all along the tube and creates a compressive stress, and a bending process. The understanding of superposition of stresses and the process phenomena are ambitious, so that experimental experience is very useful. By using a tele-operative control, the experiment is location- and time-independent available for lecturers and students all over the world. They can interact with the process like stopping it, influencing it during the process or laying it up. The possibilities for a usage in learning environments are described and pointed out.