Friction aided deep drawing of sheet metals using polyurethane ring and auxiliary metal punch. Part 1: experimental observations on the deep drawing of aluminium thin sheets and foils

Friction aided deep drawing based on the Maslennikov process is investigated as a method to facilitate the deep drawing of sheet metals with poor drawability. Aluminium foils and thin sheets of 0.1–0.4 mm in thickness are used as a model for the material with poor drawability. An auxiliary metal punch is used together with a polyurethane ring to increase the drawing efficiency and to improve the dimensional accuracy of the drawn cup. The effect of drawing conditions such as thickness, hole diameter and the hardness of the polyurethane ring on the cup height are mainly investigated. Also, the optimum number of drawing operations required to achieve a given drawing ratio is examined by repeating compression and unloading the polyurethane ring. The experimental results show that even for foil and thin sheets, deep cups with drawing ratios of 2.25 and with good shape and dimensional accuracy can be obtained by repeating the drawing operation about ten times. The achievable drawing ratio is appreciably larger when compared with that obtained by the conventional deep drawing process.     

Friction aided deep drawing using newly developed blank-holder divided into eight segments

A new process on friction aided deep drawing has been developed in which a metal blank-holder divided into eight fan-shaped segments is used instead of an elastomer ring used in the Maslennikov process. This blank holding device consists of four drawing segments and four small wedges, which can move radially in- and out-wards under a certain blank-holding pressure. The drawing process can be efficiently performed using an assistant punch, which partially supports the deformation of the blank as well as improving the shape and dimensional accuracy of the drawn cup. Deep drawing experiments have been done using soft aluminum sheets of 0.5 and 1.0 mm in thickness to understand the main features of the proposed drawing process. Theoretical analyses based on the energy and slab methods have also been conducted to study the effect of main process parameters on the minimum blank holding pressure required for the onset of deformation, and to obtain the other optimum working conditions. The possibility of the new process has been confirmed by producing deep and successful cups with a drawing ratio of 4.0, although the number of drawing operations is still high.     

Plate forging of tailored blanks having local thickening for deep drawing of square cups

A plate forging process of tailored blanks having local thickening for the deep drawing of square cups was developed to improve the drawability. A sheet having uniform thickness was bent into a hat shape of two inclined portions, and then was compressed with a flat die under restraint of both edges to thicken the two inclined portions. The bending and compression were repeated after a right-angled rotation of the sheet for thickening in the perpendicular direction. The thickness of the rectangular ring portion equivalent to the bottom corner of the square cup was increased, particularly the thickening at the four corners of the rectangular ring undergoing large decrease in wall thickness in the deep drawing of square cups became double. The degree of thickening can be adjusted by controlling the punch stroke in the bending. By using the tailor blanks having local thickening, not only the decrease in wall thickness at the bottom corner of the square cup was prevented, but also the limiting drawing height of the cup without fracture was increased to 28.3 mm, whereas that for the uniform blank was 21.3 mm.     

THE SHAPE DISTORTION IN DRAWING PROCESS WITH TC1Mδ0.8 TITANIUM ALLOY SHEETS

采用有限元数值模拟与成形工艺实验相结合的方法,对0.84 mm厚的TC1M钛合金板材杯形件室温拉深成形及回弹过程进行了研究.结果显示,拉深制件不仅出现凸耳和杯口厚度不均等熟知的现象,还揭示出因钛合金各向异性所引发的杯口内壁非圆化,这类形状畸变对制件的几何精度将产生不利影响.600 ℃温热拉深能有效地抑制卸载回弹,杯口内壁非圆化得以消除,但却无法改变钛板的各向异性性质,凸耳和杯口厚度不均等畸变现象依然存在.     

Two-stage cold stamping of magnesium alloy cups having small corner radius

A two-stage cold stamping process for forming magnesium alloy cups having a small corner radius from commercial magnesium alloy sheets was developed. In the 1st stage, a cup having large corner radius was formed by deep drawing using a punch having large corner radius, and the corner radius of the cup was decreased by compressing the side wall in the 2nd stage. In the deep drawing of the 1st stage, fracture was prevented by decreasing the concentration of deformation with the punch having large corner radius. The magnesium alloy sheets were annealed at 500 °C to increase the cold formability. Circular and square cups having small corner radii were formed by the two-stage cold stamping. For the circular cup, the height of the cup was increased by ironing the side wall in the 1st stage. The radii of the bottom and side corners of the square cup were reduced by a rubber punch for applying pressure at these corners in the 2nd stage. It was found that comparatively shallow magnesium alloy square cups used as cases of laptop computers and mobile phones can be satisfactorily formed at room temperature without heating by the two-stage stamping.     

Development of a new process for producing deep square cups through conical dies

In this article, a new process for increasing the drawability of square cups has been developed. A circular blank is pushed by a flat-headed square punch through a conical die with a square aperture. The deformed blank conforms to the square shape of the die throat and finally a square cup is obtained. The developed technique has a simple tooling set in which the drawing process can be efficiently preformed in a single-acting stroke without using draw beads or blankholder. A commercial finite element simulation package, DYNAFORM, is used to investigate the developed setup in order to determine the optimum die cone angle. An experimental setup is built accordingly with a half cone angle of 18°. Brass alloy (67/33 Cu–Zn) and commercially pure aluminum (Al99.5w) sheets are used in the experimentations. The effects of the original blank thickness (t_o=1, 1.5, 2, 2.5, and 3 mm) and the orientation of the blank rolling direction (0°, 22.5°, 45°, and 67.5°) to the punch side on the limiting drawing ratio (LDR) and punch load are experimentally investigated. The present process successfully produces square cups with drawing ratios of 2.92 for brass and 2.74 for aluminum. The new process has shown superiority over the conventional methods through achieving high drawing ratio especially for thick sheets (2–3 mm). Comparison between experimental results and the available published work showed that the required punch force in the new process is significantly reduced while the LDR is increased.     

Deep spinning of sheet metals

Spinning of sheet metals into cylindrical cups is an important sheet metal forming process for its advantages of flexible tooling and very small forming loads. The most challenging aspect in this process is its low formability due to wrinkling formation in the free flange. In this work, a new deep spinning process with roller set aided with blank-holder of constant clearance is proposed aiming to suppress the wrinkling formation in the deformation zone. Experimental work on annealed and hard aluminum sheet metals is carried out to assess the new process. The proposed spinning process has shown rapid increase in the formability of the sheet metals as the roller feed increases. On the other hand, significant increase in the roller feed worsens the formability of sheet metals in conventional spinning. The Limiting Spinning Ratios, LSRs; or the blank to mandrel diameters ratios, have increased from 1.75 using the conventional spinning to 2.40 using the deep spinning with annealed aluminum sheets in one pass. Also, the LSRs have increased from 1.67 using the conventional spinning to 2.24 using the deep spinning with hard aluminum sheets in one pass. New failure modes of flange jamming and wall fracture have been presented and discussed. In addition, the formability limitations, thickness strains, and spun cup form features at different process parameters are experimentally investigated and discussed. Further, a finite element model for the new process is presented and verified showing the limitation of the available shell elements offered by ANSYS Mechanical APDL in modeling the new process.     

A Method for evaluating limiting drawing ratios

Sufficient data have now been generated to assess the influence of material, process, and tooling variables on the limiting drawing ratio, when deep drawing cylindrical cups from circular blanks. The influence of these parameters is less well understood in the deep drawing of nonaxisymmetric cups, and the data that exist have generally been collected from drawing tests. A theoretical approach is presented for predicting the limiting drawing ratio when deep drawing prismatic cups. For a given blank geometry, the drawing load is calculated to plastically deform the flange, overcome friction between the flange and the blank holder, and to bend the material over the die radius. Deformation in the cup wall is ignored. The onset of yielding in the flange is determined using a finite-element code. The calculated drawing load is compared to a theoretical maximum, and when the two values coincide, this yields the limiting blank size under the assumed processing conditions, i.e., blank holder force, die radius, blank shape, and coefficient of friction. The theoretical predictions were compared with experimental results when deep drawing square cups from optimum blank shapes, and the correspondence was found to be acceptable.     

Deformation analysis and blank design in square cup drawing

A finite-element procedure is developed for modeling of the square cup drawing process based on finite strain formulation and membrane theory. The sheet material was assumed to obey Hill's anisotropic yield criterion and its associated flow rule. The workhardening characteristics of the material and Coulomb friction between the sheet metal and forming tools were incorporated into the simulations. Computed results with a square blank for the strain distributions were found to be consistent experimental data. Solutions were also obtained for various blank shapes with identical surface areas. Good correlations were found between the finite-element predictions and experiments for load-displacement curves and deformed-flange configurations.Based on the finite-element results of net material flow during the deformaion, an optimum blank shape was determined. Using this optimum blank shape, both the finite-element simulation and cup drawing experiment were performed and it was shown that a cup with the flange of uniform size around its periphery was obtained at a predetermined cup height.     

Deep drawing of square cups with magnesium alloy AZ31 sheets

The square cup drawing of magnesium alloy AZ31 (aluminum 3%, zinc 1%) sheets was studied by both the experimental approach and the finite element analysis. The mechanical properties of AZ31 sheets at various forming temperatures were first obtained from the tensile tests and the forming limit tests. The test results indicate that AZ31 sheets exhibit poor formability at room temperature, but the formability could be improved significantly at elevated temperatures up to 200 °C. The test results were then employed in the finite element simulations to investigate the effects of process parameters, such as punch and die corner radii, and forming temperature, on the formability of square cup drawing with AZ31 sheets. In order to validate the finite element analysis, the deep drawing of square cups of AZ31 sheets at elevated temperatures was also performed. The experimental data show a good agreement with the simulation results, and the optimal forming temperature, punch radius and die corner radius were then determined for the square cup drawing of AZ31 sheets.     

Cold Deep Drawing of Commercial Magnesium Alloy Sheets

A cold deep drawing process for commercial AZ31 magnesium alloy sheets was developed. The commercial sheets were successfully formed into circular cups at room temperature by optimising the annealing temperature of the sheets, i.e. a limiting drawing ratio of 1.75 was attained for an annealing temperature of 500 °C. The increases in elongation, n-value and r-value, and the decrease in flow stress effective in the improvement of drawability were obtained for the annealing. The apparatus for cold deep drawing without heating becomes much simpler than that for the conventional warm deep drawing. The effects of the lubricant, the clearance between the die and the punch and the corner radius of the punch on the drawability were examined. The limiting drawing ratio was increased by applying force onto the edge of a blank through the die corner. In addition, cold deep drawing of magnesium alloy square cups was performed. It was found that comparatively shallow magnesium alloy cups are satisfactorily formed at room temperature without heating.     

Influence of variables in deep drawing of AA 6061 sheet

Deep drawing is one of the most important processes for forming sheet metal parts.It is widely used for mass production of cup shapes in automobile,aerospace and packaging industries.Cup drawing,besides its importance as forming process,also serves as a basic test for the sheet metal formability.The effect of equipment and tooling parameters results in complex deformation mechanism.Existence of thickness variation in the formed part may cause stress concentration and may lead to acceleration of damage.Using TAGUCHI's signal-to-noise ratio,it is determined that the die shoulder radius has major influence followed by blank holder force and punch nose radius on the thickness distribution of the deep drawn cup of AA 6061 sheet.The optimum levels of the above three factors,for the most even wall thickness distribution,are found to be punch nose radius of 3 mm,die shoulder radius of 8 mm and blank holder force of 4 kN.     

Finite element modeling and experimental results of brass elliptic cups using a new deep drawing process through conical dies

This paper introduces a new technique for deep drawing of elliptic cups through a conical die without blank holder or draw beads. In this technique an elliptic-cup is produced by pushing a circular blank using a flat-headed elliptic punch through a conical die with an elliptic aperture in a single stroke. A 3D parametric finite element (FE) model was built using the commercial FE-package ANSYS/APDL. Effects of die and punch geometry including, half-cone angle, die fillet radius, die aperture length and punch fillet radius on limiting drawing ratio (LDR), drawing load and thickness strain of the cup have been investigated numerically for optimal process design. A die with half cone angle of 18° has shown the best drawability for the new technique. An experimental set-up has been designed, manufactured, and used for experimental production of elliptical shaped sheet-metal cups. A total of seven punches having aspect ratios ranging from 2 to 2.25 and a die with an aspect ratio of 2 have been manufactured and used. Tensile tests were carried out to obtain the stress–strain behavior for the formed sheet metal. Experiments were conducted on blanks of brass (CuZn33) with initial thicknesses of 1.5, 1.9, 2.4 and 3 mm at different clearance ratios (c/t). Effects of blank thickness and clearance ratio on limiting drawing ratio, drawing load and thickness strain were numerically and experimentally investigated. Finite element model results showed good agreement with experimental results. An elliptic cup with a limiting drawing ratio (LDR) of 2.28 has been successfully achieved using the proposed technique and set-up.     

拼焊板盒形件充液拉深的数值模拟

随着汽车行业对能源消耗和汽车尾气排放的要求,应用拼焊板成形技术显得越来越重要.以差厚拼焊板拉深方盒件为研究对象,采用板料成形分析软件DYNAFORM对充液拉深和传统拉深工艺进行分析和对比.研究发现,盒形件不同部位其焊缝有不同的移动趋势,传统拉深最大焊缝移动量发生在盒形件底部中心处,充液拉深件焊缝移动最大量发生在侧壁顶部,增大充液拉深凹模油腔的压力,可以有效地减少焊缝移动量和坯料的减簿量.     

Experimental and numerical investigation on micro deep drawing process of stainless steel 304 foil using flexible tools

Flexible forming technology provides significant application potential in various areas of manufacturing, particularly at a miniaturized level. Simplicity, versatility of process and feasibility of prototyping makes forming techniques by using flexible tools suitable for micro sheet metal forming. This paper reports the results of FE simulation and experimental research on micro deep drawing processes of stainless steel 304 sheets utilising a flexible die. The study presents a novel technique in which an initial gap (positive or negative) is adopted between an adjustment ring and a blank holder employed in the developed forming system. The blank holder is moveable part and supported by a particular spring that provides the required holding force. The forming parameters (anisotropy of SS 304 material, initial gap, friction conditions at various contact interfaces and initial sheet thickness) related with the forming process are in details investigated. The FE models are built using the commercial code Abaqus/Standard. The numerical predictions reveal the capability of the proposed technique on producing micro metallic cups with high quality and large aspect ratio. To verify these results, number of micro deep drawing experiments is conducted using a special set up developed for this purpose. As providing a fundamental understanding is required for the commercial development of this novel forming technique, hence the optimization of the initial gap in accordance with each sheet thickness, thickness distribution and punch force/stroke relationship are detected.     

Multi-Stage Cold Deep Drawing of Long Pure Titanium Cups Using Coloured Sheets for Prevention of Seizure

Long pure titanium cups were formed by multi-stage cold deep drawing using commercial coloured titanium sheets for preventing seizing. The titanium sheets have sufficient ductility and high r-value for the deep drawing, whereas the seizure tends to occur during the deep drawing due to high reactivity with die materials. The coloured pure titanium sheets were treated by electrochemical coating so as to get oxide surface layer effective for preventing the seizing. By the use of commercial coloured sheets, the investment of coating machines can be avoided in sheet metal forming makers and the quality of the oxide layer can be controlled. The effects of the thickness of the oxide layer, die materials and lubricants on the occurrence of seizure in multi-stage deep drawing were examined. It was found that the coloured pure titanium sheets have sufficient ability in preventing the seizure in multi-stage deep drawing processes.     

钣金成形中润滑剂润滑效果试验研究

钣金成形中润滑状况是影响成形的一个重要因素,成形过程中局部润滑状况的改善可以提高成形性。通过杯形件拉深试验,在需要润滑的局部涂抹润滑剂,采用3种不同的成形性评价方法研究润滑剂的润滑效果。对试验中使用的4种润滑剂进行了润滑效果研究,结果表明,4种润滑剂的润滑效果(由好到差的顺序)为,聚四氟乙烯薄膜,肥皂,猪油,鸡油。     

Deep drawing of cylindrical cups with friction-actuated blank holding

The draw force and the blank-holder variations that are obtained when drawing with friction-actuated blank holding are determined theoretically for a urethane pad of particular dimensions. A prototype tooling for blanking and drawing of sheet metal of thickness 1 mm and less to cups of diameter 100 mm at draw ratio of 1.85 with such a blank holder has been designed, fabricated and tested. Experimental results from the above tooling are presented, these including the punch and blank-holder force variations with stroke and the thickness strains in the cup wall. The experimentally-measured punch force variations are compared with the theoretical predictions. The theoretical and the experimentally-measured blank-holding force variations are presented, together with the variation of critical blank-holding force that is needed to suppress wrinkling. The differences between the theoretical and the experimental force variations are discussed.     

镁合金方形件分块压边液压拉深壁厚分析

基于分块压边液压成形装置,运用Dynaform有限元软件对AZ31B镁合金方形件的液压成形过程进行了数值模拟。比较分析了镁合金板在整体式压边和分块式压边条件下的液压成形效果,重点研究了分块压边方式对镁合金方形件的壁厚影响规律,并探索了相对合理的压边力参数。研究结果表明:与整体式压边相比,采用分块式压边能有效改善AZ31B镁合金方形件的壁厚均匀性,提高其成形质量。     

Increasing of the drawing depth using tailor rolled blanks—Numerical and experimental analysis

Deep drawing is a common sheet metal forming process. In most cases, sheets with constant thicknesses are formed. At the end of the previous century, new innovative blank technologies have been established for weight saving purposes. The development of the flexible rolling process is an illustrating example for this progression. By changing the roll gap during rolling, longitudinal thickness transitions are produced. The innovative semi-finished product, which is produced in this manner, is called tailor rolled blank (TRB). Its behaviour and characteristics during further processing, especially in forming, are topics of present research. The main emphasis of this paper is placed on the idea that TRB can be used to increase the maximum deep drawing depth compared to blanks having a constant thickness. This can be realised by “weakening” certain areas of the blank in a way that the load in failure at critical areas is reduced. To ensure weight saving in addition to increasing the maximum deep drawing depth, the maximum sheet thickness of the TRB is equal to the constant thickness of the other blanks. The concept is first analysed with the help of numerical simulations and then verified by experimental work.