Across every major manufacturing sector, engineers are under pressure to make assemblies lighter without compromising strength or reliability.

Whether the goal is to improve fuel efficiency, expand EV driving range, enhance ergonomics, reduce shipping costs, or simply meet new material availability realities, lightweighting has become an engineering priority.

While designing lighter products delivers clear advantages, it also introduces significant challenges, especially when joining or forming thin-wall, lightweight, or mixed-material components.

Traditional methods like welding, bolting, or adhesive bonding can create stress concentrations, heat distortion, vibration issues, or added mass that can prevent engineers from achieving their weight reduction targets.

This is where Orbitform’s permanent assembly processes make a measurable impact.

The Lightweighting Challenge: Joining Thin and Multi-Material Parts

Lightweight materials such as aluminum, high-strength steels, magnesium alloys, engineered plastics, and composites are replacing conventional material choices at a higher rate. Yet these materials:

• Are more sensitive to heat

• Can crack or warp under high-force processes

• Have thinner walls that limit fastening options

• Require highly controlled deformation

• Don’t always perform well with heavy hardware or threaded fasteners

  To achieve durable joints while protecting lightweight components, engineers need methods that deliver strength without excess heat, distortion, or added mass.

  Orbitform’s forming and fastening technologies are built for exactly this.

  
  

How Orbitform Helps Engineers Reduce Assembly Weight

Orbitform offers a family of forming processes that support lightweight assemblies in different ways, including Roller Forming, Orbital Forming, Radial Forming, Impact Riveting, and Hot Upset Forming. Each process provides controlled, repeatable, permanent joining without adding heavy hardware or compromising structural integrity.

1. Roller Forming: Ideal for Thin-Wall and Lightweight Housings

Static and Articulating Roller Forming create precision-formed features on cylindrical parts, such as lips, flanges, and O-ring grooves, by rolling material rather than displacing it with high force.

Lightweight benefits:

• Forms features without thinning or cracking aluminum or magnesium

• Protects dimensional stability

• Eliminates secondary machining steps (reducing unnecessary mass and cost)

• Great for housings, pump bodies, HVAC components, and rotating assemblies

  Roller Forming allows designers to use thinner walls and lighter materials without sacrificing strength.

2. Orbital & Radial Forming: Strong Joints with Minimal Stress

Orbital and radial forming create permanent fastening joints by applying low-force, controlled deformation, making them ideal for lightweight fasteners, thin stampings, and delicate assemblies.

Lightweight benefits:

• Allows use of smaller or lighter fasteners

• Reduces cracking in lightweight alloys

• Creates strong joints without welding or threaded hardware

• Works well with plastics, thin metals, and multi-material stacks

  Engineers can design lighter, more compact assemblies when joint strength comes from the forming process and not from bulky hardware.

3. Impact Riveting: Mechanical Joining for Thin or Sensitive Materials

When a mechanical fastener is required, Impact Riveting offers a highly repeatable method for assembling lightweight materials.

Lightweight benefits:

• Limits distortion in thin aluminum or steel

• Handles multi-layer or mixed-material stacks

• Supports high-throughput production with high assembly speed

• Offers high strength without the added mass of multiple components

• Often replaces spot welding in lightweight assemblies

  Impact Riveting is widely used in tools, appliances, automotive trim, and consumer products where structural integrity and appearance both matter.

4. Hot Upset Forming: High-Strength Joints Without Heavy Hardware

Hot Upset Forming combines heat and pressure to form a fastener into a substrate, producing an extremely durable joint without additional brackets, bolts, nuts, or clamps.

Lightweight benefits:

• Eliminates heavy fastening hardware

• Creates vibration-resistant structural joints

• Well-suited for forming harder alloys and exotic materials

• Ideal for EV components, aerospace assemblies, and high-duty industrial products

• Allows designers to reduce overall assembly mass while increasing reliability

  It’s one of the strongest ways to join lightweight materials to other components and maximize joint hole fill, especially when subjected to dynamic loads.

Why Lightweighting Often Begins With Better Assembly Technology

Lightweight design isn’t just about selecting less dense materials. It’s about rethinking the entire structure from how components fit together to how features are formed, and even how joints carry load.

Orbitform’s forming processes help engineers reduce weight by:

• Eliminating threaded fasteners and hardware

• Removing brackets and reinforcement features

• Reducing the need for high-heat joining methods

• Allowing designers to choose thinner walls

• Enabling multi-material assemblies without complexity

• Reducing secondary machining or finishing steps

  By focusing on how a part is joined, teams often find the largest opportunities to reduce unnecessary mass and improve product durability.

  
  

Is Your Assembly a Candidate for Lightweighting?

Here are questions engineers often ask when reevaluating a design:

• Could a formed feature replace a bolt, screw, or bracket?

• Do we use welding in areas where heat distortion is a concern?

• Are we adding thickness or extra support materials to compensate for weak joints?

• Could better joint control let us use a lighter alloy?

• Are threaded features contributing more weight than necessary?

  If the answer to any of these is “yes,” Orbitform can help you rethink the joint.

Bring Us Your Lightweighting Challenge

Orbitform’s Solutions Lab regularly partners with engineers to test lightweight materials, validate forming concepts, and optimize joints for strength, appearance, and durability. If your team is working toward a lighter, more efficient design, we can help you evaluate which permanent assembly process is the best fit.

Let’s build lighter, stronger, smarter assemblies—together. Contact Orbitform or schedule a lab evaluation today.