Design guidelines development of successive forming tooling for tailor-formed blanks fabrication

Abstract

As the demands of manufacturing become more tailored to suit the needs of customers, there has been a great interest to develop highly efficient and cheaper alternatives to produce customized parts without the hassle of outsourcing due to machine restrictions. Successive Forming (SF) is a Combined Stamping Forging (CSF) method capable of producing metal plates with different cross sectional thicknesses by progressively forging upon the plate to produce the desired profile. The manufactured profile, also known as a Tailor-Formed Blanks (TFB), can then be further processed to produce parts with various capabilities. An experimental study to identify the inherent problems on SF was conducted to understand the forming process window of the technique. This was accompanied by series of numerical studies which were conducted to identify the optimal die features and their geometrical windows. The results show that the features of the die should be as short and stubby as possible with sufficient interaction between the forming zones, which can be achieved by limiting the range of the spreading angle, β, from β = 7ᵒ and β = 21ᵒ. Other topographies such as steps or forward-facing facets should also be avoided. The guidelines developed from this study would allow SF process designers select the appropriate die geometry and process parameters to produce these TFB’s. These guidelines are accompanied by an optimised die design developed using the data gathered.