Method for Manufacturing a Railcar Body

Abstract

A method for manufacturing a railcar body includes assembling an underframe assembly, side walls, a roof and end walls made from laser cut sheet and plate components where the assemblies made from sheet components are robotically laser welded by solely using melt-through welds and where the assemblies made from plate components are robotically laser welded using solely butt welds.

Description

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATION[0001]This application claims priority to European Patent Application No. 19204307.3 filed Oct. 21, 2019, the disclosure of which is hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety.FIELD OF THE INVENTION[0002]The present invention generally relates to the field of rail vehicles. More specifically, the invention relates to a method for assembling a rail vehicle.BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION[0003]Railcar bodies are manufactured in different ways which typically involve assembling aluminum or steel components either by welding or by using through fasteners such as bolts. Because welding operations require that welded components be located in close proximity and because welding generates much heat inducing distortion in welded components, it is necessary to use tooling in which the components to be welded are held in place before, during, and after the welding operation. Such tooling translates in increased production cost, especially considering tha...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

The present invention provides a method of manufacturing a railcar that overcomes certain disadvantages of current methods. This method is cheaper because no tooling is required during assembly and welding operations. The method includes securing the overlapping pairs of sheet components using fasteners inserted in the aligned alignment holes. The fasteners are operative to secure along three orthogonal axes the sheet components of the first subset. This method eliminates the need for tooling to hold together the sheet components of the first subset.

Problems solved by technology

Because welding operations require that welded components be located in close proximity and because welding generates much heat inducing distortion in welded components, it is necessary to use tooling in which the components to be welded are held in place before, during, and after the welding operation.

Such tooling translates in increased production cost, especially considering that railcar bodies are large assemblies manufactured in relatively small quantities, thereby translating in large expensive tooling that cannot be amortized over a large production run.

Although using such through fasteners does not induce heat distortion as occurs with welding, it adds substantial weight to the assembly and in most cases still requires tooling to ensure precise positioning.

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