Patent ID: 7530249

Claim:
A method comprising steps of: providing a sheet of high strength material having a tensile strength of at least 80 KSI; providing a roll-forming apparatus capable of forming the sheet at speeds of at least about 900 feet per hour, the roll-forming apparatus including an adjustable sweep station, an actuator, and a controller operably connected thereto for automatically rapidly adjusting the sweep station to generate different sweep radii; and roll-forming the sheet to form a continuous beam having a continuous cross section and, simultaneous with and near an end of the roll-forming, sequentially and repeatedly imparting different sweeps while running the roll-forming at a line speed of at least about 900 feet per hour, the step of roll-forming the continuous beam and imparting different sweeps including forming at least one first section with a radius R 1 and at least one second section with a radius R 2 different from the first radius R 1 , and including a step of cutting off the continuous beam into beam segments at a location in a center of the one section with radius R 1 with each of the beam segments having the segment with radius R 2 centrally located and a portion of the segment with radius R 1 located at each end.