A developed process for deep drawing of metal foil square cups

Abstract

Deep drawing of non-axisymmetric cross-section cups from thin sheets or metal foils has become increasingly important, especially for miniaturization of mechanical components. However, with a thin sheet thickness, conventional deep drawing processes are not able to offer reasonable drawing ratios due to early formations of localized wrinkling and fractures at cup corners. In this paper, a friction aided deep drawing process has been developed to increase the deep drawability of thin sheets and metal foils. Productions of square cups have been chosen to verify the current proposed process since the shape provides recognizable non-homogeneous deformation, which can then be compared to conventional processes. In the proposed process, a circular blank holder of a square hole is divided into eight identical segments of 45°. During the deep drawing process, four of the eight segments will move radially inward while the other four segments will move radially outwards cyclically under a pre-determined blank holding pressure. A finite element model of the technique was used to simulate virtual experiments to evaluate and optimize the controlling parameters that influence the cup height and forming process. Taguchi and Pareto ANOVA statistical methods were subsequently used to determine the optimum conditions for best cup height. The results have shown that the new technique is capable of producing deep square cups from soft aluminum sheet (Al–O) of 0.5mm thickness with a high drawing ratio of 3.3. In addition, it was also observed that the radial displacement was the most significant parameter in influencing the cup height.