Manufacturing of Sheet Metal Components with Variants Using Process Adapted Semi-Finished Products

Abstract

Manufacturing of functional sheet metal products by forming can be realised with the application of conventional bulk forming operations on sheet metals. The challenges of those sheet bulk metal forming processes are high resulting forming forces and the demand on a specific control of material flow. To meet these challenges well-directed thinning of blanks as well as accumulations of material to form functional elements is employed. Due to local loads, simultaneous 2D and 3D stress and strain states occur. Process adapted semi-finished products, containing a defined sheet thickness characteristic, are formed in the presented work by the technologies upsetting and orbital forming. Orbital forming is an incremental bulk forming operation to decrease the forming zone extension and consequently the required process force. Afterwards a process combination of deep drawing and upsetting in order to manufacture a cup-shaped workpiece with external gearing is presented. The results of this integrated single-stage forming process are discussed and subsequently the potential to enhance the process limits is shown by using process adapted semi-finished products.