Pretex® is not just Pretex®

The automotive industry in particular is making increasingly high demands on materials. The requirements specified for modern steels call for increasing strength coupled with excellent formability. In order to manufacture complex components reliably and in large numbers, it is the friction between tool and material that is of decisive importance.
As trials have shown both in the laboratory and in practice, the application of a specific texture to the surface of the sheet metal improves friction during the forming process. The so-called Pretex® structure as illustrated in Figure 1 is particularly advantageous.

With its spherical lubricating pockets, Pretex^® in combination with a lubricant provides an ideal surface system which affords excellent friction and a stable process window even with small amounts of lubrication.
What’s more, Pretex^® can also be customized to meet specific requirements. By varying the number and size of the lubricating pockets, it is possible to achieve a variety of surface textures. For example, Pretex^®focar^® has been specially developed to improve the paint application characteristics of external bodyshell components..

New Pretex^® variants at Salzgitter are always subjected to a multi-stage development process (see Figure 2). Beginning with the tactile and optical texturing of the sheet metal surface, the process continues with laboratory trials to determine friction and forming characteristics, through to component tests in collaboration with the customer, in order definitively evaluate performance under real life manufacturing conditions.
With Pretex^® the sheet metal surface can be precisely customized to accommodate customer preferences in terms of roughness and peak counts.