3D printed prototyping tools for flexible sheet metal drawing

Peter Frohn-Sörensen,Michael Geueke,Bernd Engel,Christopher Kuhnhen,Tadele Belay Tuli,Martin Manns

doi:10.1007/s00170-021-07312-y

Peter Frohn-Sörensen, Michael Geueke + Show 4 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1007/s00170-021-07312-y

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Abstract

Due to the change from mass production to mass personalized production and the resulting intrinsic product flexibility, the automotive industry, among others, is looking for cost-efficient and resource-saving production methods to combining global just-in-time production. In addition to geometric manufacturing flexibility, additive manufacturing offers a resource-saving application for rapid prototyping and small series in predevelopment. In this study, the FDM process is utilized to manufacture the tooling to draw a small series of sheet metal parts in combination with the rubber pad forming process. Therefore, a variety of common AM polymer materials (PETG, PLA, and ABS) is compared in compression tests, from which PLA is selected to be applied as sheet metal forming die. For the rubber pad forming process, relevant processing parameters, i.e., press force and rubber cushion hardness, are studied with respect to forming depth. The product batch is examined by optical evaluation using a metrological system. The scans of the tool and sheet metal parts confirm the mechanical integrity of the additively manufactured die from polymer and thus the suitability of this approach for small series in sheet metal drawing processes, e.g., for automotive applications.

Highlights

Over the past decades, consumer demand led to the transformation from mass production to mass personalized production, where on-demand high output and flexibility, as well as customization, led to an increase in product variety.In this context, various types of flexibility such as machine or product flexibility are differentiated
The experiments confirm the feasibility of operating additive manufacturing (AM) tools in the female type Rubber pad forming (RPF) process for forming products from sheet metal of automotive body grade and thickness
The process parameters that are necessary to form a spherical dome geometry from DC03 sheet metal in the rubber pad forming process are determined in an empirical approach

Summary

Introduction

Consumer demand led to the transformation from mass production to mass personalized production, where on-demand high output and flexibility, as well as customization, led to an increase in product variety (see Fig. 1). In this context, various types of flexibility such as machine (various operations performed without set-up change) or product (ease of introducing products into an existing product mix) flexibility are differentiated. For production of large lot sizes, conventional forming techniques are fast and accurate but insufficient when producing variants, which is due to expensive tooling. To ensure mass customization and personalization in metal forming, flexibility plays a vital role [4, 5]

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