“Flexible Sheet Metal Forming”

Seminar Submitted to
KAVAYITRI BAHINABAI CHAUDHARI NORTH MAHARASHTRA UNIVERSITY,
JALGAON.
in fulfillment of requirement for the award of degree of
BACHELOR OF ENGINEERING
Under the
Faculty of Engineering and Technology
In the discipline
Mechanical Engineering

By
KOMAL RADE
B.E. Computer
Guided By
Prof. V S Chavan
Asst. Professor

Department of Mechanical Engineering

Godavari Foundation’s

Godavari College of Engineering, Jalgaon

( An affiliated to Kavayitri Bahinabai Chaudhari North Maharashtra University, Jalgaon.)
October 2018
 Godavari Foundation’s

Godavari College of Engineering, Jalgaon

(An affiliated to Kavayitri Bahinabai Chaudhari North Maharashtra University, Jalgaon)

CERTIFICATE

This is to certify that the Case Study titled, “ FLEXIBILE SHEET METAL
FORMING” submitted by KOMAL RADE in fulfillment of the degree of BACHELORS
OF ENGINEERING in the Department of MECHANICAL ENGINEERING, Godavari
College of engineering, North Maharashtra University, Jalgaon is a bonafide record of work
carried out by him in the Department of Computer Engineering, North Maharashtra University,
Jalgaon under my guidance and supervision. In my opinion this work has attained the standard
fulfilling the requirements of the regulations of the University.

Date:
Place: Jalgaon

Prof. V S Chavan Prof. Vijay Patil

Asst. Professor H.O.D, Mechanical Department

Dr. V.G.Arajpure
Principal
 DECLARATION / UNDERTAKING

I hereby declare that the work presented in this project “ FLEXIBLE SHEET METAL
FORMING ” was carried out by me under the supervision of guide from July to October - 2018
This work or any part of this work is based on original research and has not been submitted by
me to any University/Institution for the award of any degree.

Date:
Place: Jalgaon
Komal Rade
Student, T.E. Mechanical
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

No work can be accomplished unless it has evolved as a result of co-

operating, assistance and understanding of some knowledgeable group of people. I
take the opportunity to thank our Principal Prof. Dr. V.G. Arajpure and Head of
Department Prof. Vijay Patil for providing all the necessary facilities, which were
indispensable in the completion of special study. I would like to thank my guide
Prof. V. S. Chavan for providing to be a great help by giving us guidance through
their vast experience, intellectual skills and also thankful to all the staff members
of the Computer Engineering Department. I would also like to thank the college
for providing the required magazines, books and access to the internet for
collecting information related to the report. Finally, I would like to thank my
parents.

Komal Rade
Student, T.E. Mechanical
 Abstract

In general, this exible forming process using the recon gurable die has been
utilized for manufacturing of curved thick plates used for hull structures, architec-
tural structures and so on. In this study sheet metal forming process is carried out
by using exible dies model instead of conventional matched die set.. In the exible
forming process for sheet metal, e ect of a blank holder is also investigated
according to blank holding methods. Formability in view of occurrence of dimples is
compared with regard to the various punch sizes. Consequently, it is con rmed that
the exible forming for sheet material using rubber pad has enough capability and
feasibility for manufacturing of smoothly curved surface instead of conventional die
forming method. Flexible forming systems have been used e ciently in metal
removal applications. Recently it became evident, however, that a true economic
ad-vantage of exible forming will become available only when an integration
between forming, cutting, and other operations will be materialized.
Flexible forming is a sheet metal forming process with the application of soft
material tooling. In this study, exible (silicone rubber, SR, and styrene butadiene rubber,
SBR) and semi-rigid (polyamide 66, PA) polymeric materials were adopted to make
several upper dies which were used in combination with aluminium lower dies. In
response to the high cost and long cycle in the die design and manufacture, this paper
explores , exible forming system of sheet metal based on the fundamental principle of
Multi-Point Forming. The selected future directions of development in new technologies
and machines for sheet metal forming taking into account modern blank holding
systems in the process of deep drawing have been indicated. Also the tendencies in
introduction of new technologies and modernization of presently used technologies in
order to increase productivity have been discussed. In the eld of sheet forming,
innovative and exible processes that do not impose the use of expensive conventional
equipments and they are do not require time consuming set-up operations have
become, nowadays, a rather promising research topic. Two di erent main lines are
currently followed: the former is based on the development of new strapping processes
based on the utilization of exible media, while the latter is
aimed to develop so called progressive forming processes (spinning and
incremental forming). In this topics embedded are assigned to di erent research
groups and are presented below.

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Contents

List of Figures ii

1 Introduction 1

2 Literature Survey 3

3 Methodology 6

4 CLASSICATIONS 8
4.1 Multipoint Incremental forming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
4.2 Flexible Multipoint Hydroforming (Deep Drawing) . . . . . . . . . . 11
4.3 Microscale Laser Forming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

5 Advantages of Flexible Forming Over Convectional Forming 17

6 Disadvantages of Flexible Forming Over Convectional Forming 18

7 Applicatons 19

8 Future Scope 20

9 Conclusions 21

References 22

i
List of Figures

4.1 Principle of Multipoint Forming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

4.2 Multipoint Stretch forming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
4.3 multi-point exible forming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
4.4 The Experimental Apparatus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
4.5 Forming technique with positive initial gap . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
4.6 Forming technique with negative initial gap . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
4.7 Multipoint Incremental forming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
4.8 The schematic Representation Of Flexoforming . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
4.9 microscale Laser Forming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

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Chapter 1

Introduction

Flexible forming processes allow for the adaptation and modi cation of the prod-uct
geometry with little e ort. They enable the economical production of prototypes and
small series, an extended geometry portfolio and the production of thickness-optimized
semi- nished products. Therefore they are serving lightweight design and the trend
towards shorter product development cycles as well as increasingly indi-vidualized
products. Many application parts contain elements which are made by anging or hole
anging operations. The production of these anging elements by means of Incremental
Sheet Forming, short ISF, can be easily integrated into the production process on the
Flexible Sheet Metal Processing Centre. Thus, the entire process chain of the
component production can be carried out in the same clamping. The advantages of this
process integration are demonstrated by a component based on the inspection cover of
the Airbus A320. First of all, the curved preform of the target geometry is created within
a very short period of time by stretch forming. In ISF, a hemispherical forming tool
successively forms the remaining areas of the component. After trimming, the high
process limits of ISF are nally used to set up the ange and hole ange elements. Sheet
metal forming processes are widely used to produce complex parts, and consist of a
series of basic operations, like bending, stretching, stamping and blanking. Among
sheet metal forming, exible forming is a new process for the production of sheet metal
parts with complex shapes by using a exible medium, such as rubber, as a die.
Recently, rubber forming processes have

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gained interest since they have been used extensively in the aircraft industry. The
advantages of exible forming over conventional forming processes are principally
low cost tooling, versatility of the process, and low damaging of the formed parts.
In this way, the development of innovative technologies within manufacturing
is highly requested. In particular, as far as forming processes are concerned, inno-
vative processes that do not impose the use of expensive conventional equipments
and they do not require time consuming setup operations have become, nowadays,
a rather promising research eld. In fact, such technologies give rise to exibility
improvement in manufacturing processes, and, as a consequence, enable a
competi-tive advantage for industries in the modern manufacturing environment.
With the rapid development of reduction in size and integration, micro components
have been widely applied to micro-electromechanical systems, micro-system
technology, and precision machinery. Responding to this important industry trend,
micro forming processes, which have unique advantages compared with other
micro manufacturing technologies, have been rapidly developed and researched.

Nevertheless, the deformation behavior of materials is considerably

changed when the geometrical sizes of components decrease to the micro
scale. The defor-mation mechanics, material ow, and friction condition are
changed because of the size e ect In the last few years the metal forming eld
have been involved in several research projects both on hydroforming and on
incremental forming. Both hydro-forming and incremental forming permits a very
relevant reduction of the tooling and set-up costs and improves process exibility;
on the other band they are quite "young" and under development processes,
which require a considerable research e ort.

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Chapter 2

Literature Survey

1. Huixia Liu 1,*, Wenhao Zhang et. al ; Multilayer metal composite sheets
possess superior properties to monolithic metal sheets, and formability is dif-
ferent from monolithic metal sheets. In this research, the feature size e ect on
formability of multilayer metal composite sheets under micro scale laser
exible forming was studied by experiment. The research results showed that
the formability of two-layer copper/nickel composite sheets was strongly in u-
enced by feature size. With feature size increasing, the e ect of layer stacking
sequence on forming depth, thickness thinning ratio, and surface roughness
became increasingly larger. However, the normalized forming depth,
thickness thinning ratio, surface roughness, and micro-hardness of the
formed compo-nents under the same layer stacking sequence rst increased
and then decreased with increasing feature size. As such, it is critical to
investigate the size e ect on the deformation behavior of materials.

2. Liu, H.X.; Sun, X.Q. et. al ;The process of exible hydroforming is a combi-
nation between the hydroforming and the multipoint exible forming, which
allows a synergy of the advantages of two processes. On one hand, the
hydro-forming process allows a contribution in the exibility by replacing one of
two shaping tools by a uid, on the other hand, the multipoint exible forming,
allows modifying freely the nal shape with its recon gurable tool, constituted

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by a matrices of adjustable punch elements.

3. Peng-yi Wang, Hui Song et. al ;To protect the limited natural resources and
solve the global environmental problems, lightweight constructions have re-
ceived great attention. More exible forming technologies are needed for its
help on lightweight constructions. They are invented a new process to draw
sheet metal blanks into a die utilizing a owing viscous thermoplastic poly-mer
medium. The method was later named viscous pressure forming (VPF), which
use a ow able semi-solid polymer with a certain viscosity and strain rate
sensitivity as a forming medium In VPF, it is possible to choose viscous
medium with certain viscosity according to the geometries and material fea-
tures of formed parts. There are also optimum viscosities for di erent stages
in a forming process. But it is di cult to change the medium viscosity dur-ing a
single process in VPF. It will have great signi cance to develop a new exible-
die forming approach, which can adjust the viscosity of medium during a
signal forming process. .

4. Mao, T., and Altan, et. al ; In order to changes associated with construc-tion of
machines used in die and Die-less sheet metal forming have been pre-
sented. The selected future directions of development in new technologies
and machines for sheet metal forming taking into account modern blank
holding systems in the process of deep drawing have been indicated. Also the
tenden-cies in introduction of new technologies and modernization of
presently used technologies in order to increase productivity.

5. Tisza, M. et. al ; To keep this key role of sheet metal forming in manufacturing
industry, a continuous development is necessary concerning the materials, the
development of new innovative forming processes, the tooling and manufac-
turing equipment. The ever-increasing requirements stated by the automotive
industry may be regarded as one of the main driving forces behind sheet-metal-
forming innovations. Some decades ago, design engineers mainly focused their
attention on structural and dimensional stability and durability. In recent

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years, the reduction of fuel consumption together with increasing comfort

re-quirements led to the intensive development of innovative new
materials. En-hanced sti ness together with weight reduction resulted in
the development and wide application of various grades of high-strength
steels. Nowadays, several micro-alloyed and phosphorous alloyed steels
both with and without bake-hardening are frequently used.

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Chapter 3

Methodology

To elaborate new, innovative sheet-forming processes, the automotive industry al-

ways played a key role in Metal forming had its beginnings in the latter part of the
19th century (Thiruvarudchelvan, 1993). In this review on elastomers in metal form-
ing, Thiruvarudchelvan individuated several processes: the Guerin process (which
used an enclosed rubber pad); the Marform process (with the addition of an inde-
pendent blank-holder); the Verson- Wheelon process (which used a comparatively
lighter press with an in atable rubber bag); bending, roll forming; blanking and
piercing; embossing; deep drawing; free forming; tube bulging. In this review, ure-
thanes were considered the best materials for exible tools because of their good oil
and solvent resistance, good wear resistance, high thermal stability and load bear-
ing capacity. In 1995, Browne and Battikha studied the aluminium sheet forming (by
Guerin process and Marform process) using a exible die made of neoprene or
commercial rubber (Browne and Battikha). They concluded that exible forming is
capable of producing, from thin aluminium alloy sheet, shallow formed parts with
good surface nish and little metal thinning. Tooling costs are reduced considerably
as only one form block needs to be manufactured per component. Also the time to
production is low because of the system simplicity which enables the rapid pro-
duction of Prototype parts. In a last contribution, the application of prototyping
techniques like stereolithography was discussed for the production of exible tools in
polyurethane Despite of the big interest in this technology, scanty information are

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available in the scienti c literature about exible forming. Many important aspects
have not been deepened yet such as the e ect of the viscoelatic behaviour of
the tool exible material on the process performances, or the durability of the
exible tool. Moreover, even if new high performance materials have been
introduced into the market in the last decade, their suitability for rubber forming
has not been evaluated.
The most famous and common manufacturing process in many industrial and
civil sectors is sheet metal forming which are capable of producing good quality com-
plex part with nowadays technology. However, the demand of the customers could
have e ects on many conventional forming methods when small production batch with
high product quality are required. With economic competitiveness, manufac-turing
companies must nd new solutions that are more exible to satisfy di erent market
segments. In most of the manufacturing processes, prototyping is a very important step
before beginning real operation in mass production. Prototype al-lows the improvement
and development of the product, changing its design in early steps of product
development. Producing prototypes in some manufacturing pro-cesses may consume a
lot of money and time to tryout, especially if speci c dies are required as it is the case of
sheet metal components. Nowadays, formability issues of tailor-welded blanks are one
of the most important questions, to provide signi cant load-bearing parts with reduced
weight without any decrease in shape or structural stability. Recently, whole process
chains were developed to further improve the suitability of light-weight structures. The
whole process includes strip production with exible rolling (the resulting sheet is often
termed as tailor-rolled blank), and subsequent manufacturing of pro le-shaped
structural elements with pro le bending forming processes. Light-weight structural
elements produced by this process have less weight than any other comparable
structures made from constant initial material thickness, and at the same time they
have much better structural behaviour. Among new, innovative forming processes
hydroforming can be regarded as an outstanding one. Hydroforming is mainly used to
produce hollow sheet or tube products often with complicated geometry to produce
light-weight parts more economically.

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Chapter 4

CLASSICATIONS

They are classi ed in three groups

1. Multipoint Incremental forming

2. Flexible multipoint Hydroforming (deep drawing)

3. Micro scale Laser Forming

4.1 Multipoint Incremental forming

Multi-point forming g. multi-point die forming (MPDF) or multipoint press forming

(MPPF) technology is a exible 3D manufacturing process for varied large sheet which
similar to forming process of solid dies. In Solid die, two opposite solid die (upper and
lower) are used to press onto a blank and form into particular shapes. Instead, MPF
used matrix punches with speci c shape that could adjust height by mean of line
actuator . Due to the rapid change of two element group, several special MPF
techniques that are impossible in conventional forming have been investigated. For
instance, spring-back is compensated cycle by cycle, large deformation could be
obtained and large size of sheet can be formed in small scale MPF equipment.

MPF is to use the adjustable element group to form the variable curved
surface, taking place of the traditional die forming. It is a exible method that can be
used in forming 3-D surface of sheet metal. The essence of MPF is to divide the

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Figure 4.1: Principle of Multipoint Forming

curved surface of the die into many discrete pins, each pin called element, with the
element group instead of the traditional dies (Fig. I). By this means, a set of this
apparatus can be used to carry out di erent curved surface forming by adjusting the
elements height of both the upper side and the lower side. That is to say, the basic
conception of MPF is using the elements group to shape the surface of the die.
Each element can be controlled by computer so that the curved surface can be
changed at any time. Based on the principles of MPF and deforming characters,
MPF is divided into four di erent types - multi-point die forming, multi point half die
forming, multi point press forming, and multi point half press forming.

Figure 4.2: Multipoint Stretch forming

Overcoming mass production problems following try-out, new press tech-

nologies continuously emerge as new techniques and ideas in sheet metal forming are
considered in press design. Controlling the ow of sheet metal via controllable multi-
cylinder blank holder actuators reduces die-try out time by cutting down on die work .
The application of multi-input multi-output (MIMO) stamping process controller

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especially in case of forming complex-geometry parts allows to apply the non-uniform

metal in di erent regions of the draw piece. The multi-point exible forming (MPF) is
another recent exible technique for manufacturing three-dimensional sheet metal parts.
In this process, the sheet metal can be formed between a pair of opposed matrices of
punch elements instead of the conventional xed shape die sets. The punches elements
are controlled simply, by adjusting the height of the elements of both upper and the
lower matrices, di erent curved surfaces can be created. By using this tech-neology,
production of many parts with di erent geometry will be possible just by using one same
die set and the need to design and manufacturing of various die will be avoided that
lead to great saving in time and manufacturing cost specially in the eld of small batch or
single production. a production of lighter

structures and complex forms. However, in exible multipoint processes, the direct
contact between the blank and punch elements generates a severe dimpling on the nal
part, the insertion of an elastomeric sheet, between the dies and the blank as seen in
( gure1) , has been an e ective by playing on the sti ness and the thick-ness of an
elastomeric sheet, it was possible then to reduce in a signi cant way these dim-

pling severity. Multipoint sandwich exible forming (MPSF) is an innovative

version of the multipoint process which consist to substitute the movable die by a
stack of elastomeric sheets, un-der the slide of the press ( gure 2)but it is often nec-
essary to adapt the shape of this stack to the depth of the part to be produced. The
multipoint exible hydroforming is an original process which combines the hydro-
forming and the multipoint exible forming, to obtain a synergy of the advantages of
both processes. It allows to keep the whole exibility of the basic multipoint exible
forming (with two multipoint discrete dies), by using uniquely at one side, of a single
multipoint discrete die to perform completely the nal part shape, on the other side of
the blank, the second multipoint die is advantageously substituted by the uid
pressure, which can be applied, if necessary, via an elastomeric membrane.

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Figure 4.3: multi-point exible forming

4.2 Flexible Multipoint Hydroforming (Deep Draw-

ing)

The application of sheet hydro-forming in the modern automotive industry has bad
a very large increase in the last decade. It is worth pointing out some of the most
relevant advantages o ered by sheet hydro-forming. This technology allows to strongly
reducing both the costs due to the manufacturing and the maintenance of the dies and
the ones linked to set-up times. Such reduction is not only due to the avoidance of one
of the dies; furthermore the pressure distribution due to the uid action over the sheet is
more gradual and distributed, thus permitting to construct the remaining die in less
expensive materials than the conventional ones. Other advantages supplied by hydro-
forming are a remarkable increase of the limiting drawing ratio in deep drawing, a more
uniform thickness distribution on the stamped sheet, a safer residual stresses
distribution and nally a better surface quality than using other traditional processes. The
rubber material used for the exible die is

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characterized by a nonlinear stress-strain relation for large deformation, as well as

it is nearly incompressible through the volumetric compression test. Therefore, the
Mooney-Rivlin hyperelastic model can be presented to describe this behavior.

Figure 4.4: The Experimental Apparatus

The special experimental set up shown in Figure 4 was developed to conduct

micro deep drawing experiments. In general, this device consists of two main com-
ponent sets. The rst set, which represents the upper movable part of the device, is
composed of two groups of components the rst group involves upper plate, three
springs, three spring guiders, three guide posts, solid punch and lower plate. The
second one involves the main tools responsible directly of the micro deep drawing op-
eration, which are blank holder, blank holder house, xing ring and holding spring. This
set is driven by the movable grip of the Instron 3956 machine, where the load and
displacement can be acquired directly from the Bluehill software provided with this
machine. The second set is constructed of a solid base, rubber container and rubber
pad. The main function of the three springs is to keep the ange portion of the blank
holder in direct contact with rubber container surface during the drawing stroke.
Therefore, these springs have a relatively high sti ness of 300 N/mm, which is enough
to overcome any possible movement of the middle plate upward.

Working procedure
The forming procedure, shown in Figure 5, is carried out with a positive initial
gap and can be summarized in the following steps: Step 1: The rigid punch is moved
downward just to contact the blank surface. Step 2: In this step the punch deform

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Figure 4.5: Forming technique with positive initial gap

both the blank and rubber pad just through the initial gap adopted. As a result of
incompressibility of the rubber material, a hydrostatic pressure will be generated in
the rubber pad keeping the formed part of the blank in continuous contact with the
rigid punch. Since the rubber pad is restrained inside a closed cylindrical space the
resulting pressure pushes both the blank ange and blank holder upwards through
the gap against the holding spring. Through this step the contact area between the
blank ange and the holder decreases causing the holding force to decrease. As a
result, the compromise between the decreasing contact area and the increasing
rubber pressure is a very important aspect in this technique. Step 3: The nal step of
the drawing operation starts just when the blank holder reaches the xing plate. At
this moment the rubber container is completely closed a high forming load is
needed to resist the high reaction pressure of the rubber pad. Afterwards, the rigid
punch is kept moving down to nish drawing stroke.
In some cases where an initial compression is required to be established the
experimental procedure illustrated in Figure (6) is utilized. Step 1: The rigid punch is
moved downward just to contact the blank surface. Step 2: All of the rigid punch,
blank holder and xing plate are moved downward for the required initial
compression distance (negative gap). This technique generates an initial pressure
(pre-bulging pressure) in the rubber pad. Step 3: In this step both the blank and the
rubber are formed by the rigid punch, producing a complete cup. An important note
here is that the incremental increase in the forming load in this technique is

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Figure 4.6: Forming technique with negative initial gap

higher than that obtained in the step 3 of the previous one because the rubber
pad here is initially compressed.

Figure 4.7: Multipoint Incremental forming

Considering the phenomena complexity, induced by multiple interactions

between multi-point tools, interpolators and work- piece. Finite element analysis
approach was under-taken, to investigate the new process, analysis are focused in
recent works on the most in uent parameters on the quality of the nal product, such
as, the step between elements (punch element density of the discrete dies), the
radius of curvature of the extremities of punch elements, the thicknesses of the

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blank and the elastomeric interpolator. It emerges essentially, that an increase

of the punch elements density, the thicknesses of the initial blank and the
interpolator, improve the nal part quality, with better thicknesses distribution,
reduced residual stresses and dimples. Development of innovative sheet metal
forming technologies in last years determines progress in control systems and
construction of presses and tools. Considerable growth of forming techniques
may be noticed in hydroforming, electromagnetic metal forming, sheet metal
forming with elastic tools, cavity forming processes (pneumatic bulging) of
superplastic sheet metal forming, laser forming and laser assisted forming,
magnetic-pulse forming, shot peen forming and methods of incremental forming.
Multi-stage SHF increases the formability of structural parts SHF technolo-
gies are now commonly used in automotive industries to produce fuel tanks and
tubular parts for exhaust systems. The last technological development in hydro-
forming techniques consists of combining tube bending, tube hydroforming and
tube welding in a exible manner using recon gurable machine tool equipments
easily adaptable to various production batches Flexforming is a type of hydroform-
ing process in which the sheet metal is forced to take the shape of a rigid die by the
action of uid pressure which acts through a rubber diaphragm (Fig. 8). In this
process there is only a single rigid die providing low die costs, the easy modi cation
of the dies after changes leading to fast tryouts, and nally high quality parts. The
exforming process needs special presses to stand for high pressures up to 80 MPa
in the pressure chamber. Sheet metal forming with elastic tools is commonly used
in aircraft industry, especially for forming stainless steels nickel alloys sheets.

Figure 4.8: The schematic Representation Of Flexoforming

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4.3 Microscale Laser Forming

In the microscale laser exible forming process, ultrahigh strain rate

deformation is generated, due to the ultrahigh pressure and ultra short
impacting time of this process . The appliance of microscale laser exible forming
is shown in Figure 9. It is composed of laser beam, blank holder, con nement
layer, soft punch, specimen, micro mold, lift platform and mobile platform.

Figure 4.9: microscale Laser Forming

The forming principle of microscale laser exible forming is presented as

follows. Through the transparent con nement layer, a laser beam irradiates on
the soft punch. Then the black substance on the surface of the soft punch
absorbs the laser energy and plenty of plasma with high pressure is produced.
The con nement layer prevents the plasma expanding upward, so the plasma
moves down and a large shock wave is induced. Impacted by the induced
shock wave, the soft punch is squeezed into the micro mold, and the specimen
is deformed to a certain shape. Therefore, the heat model of the laser, is not
involved in microscale laser exible forming.

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Chapter 5

Advantages of Flexible Forming

Over Convectional Forming

1. In this process used very exible materials like rubber based , will be less
likely to damaged sheet metal parts.

2. Highly complex part can be drawn or shaped easily with less removal of
ma-terial.

3. Greater labour Productivity.

4. Flexibility in design obtained.

5. Low capital cost of equipments.

6. Low application of forces required on punches.

7. Operation time required as compared to conventional forming.

8. Production rate will be increases of components .

9. High surface nish are obtained.

10. Wear rate of die are low as well as quality of product improved.

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Chapter 6

Disadvantages of Flexible Forming

Over Convectional Forming

1. It is limited to sheet metal forming.

2. Non-conducting materials cannot be produced without the aid of

conducting materials.

3. Inferior creep resistance.

4. High cost of uids and material required.

5. Wire form cannot be produced.

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Chapter 7

Applicatons

1. It is most of used in an aircraft bodies and skins.

2. An automobiles bodies and doors.

3. Windows and door frames , oor structured etc.

4. Propulsions and ducting systems.

5. Domestic utensils and cans.

6. It is most likely used in curved shape products like cup forming.

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Chapter 8

Future Scope

As a new exible-die forming method, there is still much work to do in the fu-ture.
The multipoint exible hydroforming is an adequate mixing of the bene ts of
multipoint exible forming and hydroforming processes; the result is an improved
resourceful process with upgraded quality and reduced number of component. The
future research are focused on the geometrical dimensions and forming limits of
components . The numerical model will be also developed by the introduction of
appropriate damage law I order to predict the failure of part. It will be widely used in
the ship building and airplane manufacture industries This version allows accurate,
precise and low cost technology with great saving in time manufacturing especially
in the eld of fast prototyping, small batch or single production. Concerning the
material research and development, the increasing application of high-strength
steels as well as the so-called multi-material concept was emphasized.

20
Chapter 9

Conclusions

In this study, recent development trends in sheet metal forming were overviewed
concerning the applied materials, the forming processes, as well as the tooling con-
cepts and die design practice. Among the many new, innovative process develop-
ments, some selected examples were shown including the application of single point
and multipoint exible forming, laser technology and hydroforming processes. On this
system multi-point die forming, multi-point press forming, multi-point half press forming
and multi-point step forming can be automatically realized on line . The cost of the
exible manufacture of sheet metal forming is reduced, and the cycle of die design and
manufacture is shortened. This action cannot be achieved by the conventional deep
drawing technology unless multi stage micro deep drawing is adopted which
necessitates di erent forming punch and die sets. As a result, this proposed technique
will make the production of micro metallic cups of signi cantly lower overall cost and
high quality Flexible multipoint hydroforming using metallic sheet medium is an
innovative version of multipoint exible hydro-forming, using of one metallic sheet media
instead of con thventional die and punch technique at as follows an improvement of
quality of formed thin shell products compared to methods using elastomeric media for
the same punch density.

21
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GF’s Godavari College of Engineering, Jalgaon 23