Deep drawing of rectangle parts using variable blank holder force

When deep drawing rectangle parts, instead of adopting elastic or several segmented blank holders, a new thought of applying dual layers of blank holders, which are parallel to each other, has been achieved to asynchronously vary blank holder force (BHF) at different regions of sheet flange, by dint of replacing different little mandrils in length between dual layers of blank holders, thus to further improve the formability of products. At the same time, in order to solve two problems of how to judge which one distribution of one desired integral variable BHF, which was obtained from the thickness analyses with products in advance, on blank holder for asymmetric parts is the best and to evaluate lubricant in deep drawing, a probe sensor with structure of dual cantalevers, based on the theory of resistance strain slice, fixed into the inner space of die, was developed for measuring real-time friction coefficient of sheet flange’s surface. Through this special probe sensor, not only real-time BHF on sheet flange could be measured out, but also the real-time friction coefficient could be figured out. Finally, one example of rectangle part was carried out in tests to validate the feasibility of this thought. By the way of analyzing the distribution of variation with products’ thickness on products and judging whether the whole distribution of friction on sheet flange’s surface was uniform or not, one optimized BHF loading profile could be finally obtained over the whole punch stroke.