A novel tool to enhance the lubricant efficiency on induction heat-assisted incremental sheet forming of Ti-6Al-4 V sheets

Abstract

For heat-assisted single point incremental sheet forming (SPIF) works of Ti-6Al-4 V sheets, the use of lubricant has shown significant effects on surface quality and geometric accuracy at higher temperatures. Molybdenum disulphide (MoS2) is a common lubricant widely used in SPIF works, however, it usually indicates ineffective performance at high temperatures. This article has studied different lubricants of MoS2 lubricants and proposed a novel mixture of MoS2 to provide better surface quality and improve geometric accuracy. A forming tool with a ball-roller and water channel was designed to enable the MoS2 mixture to pass through the tool tip, allowing easy application of the lubricant on the localised area and reduce the thermal expansion on the ball-roller. Surface roughness analysis has revealed that the water-cooling MoS2 mixture performed well in reducing friction effects and achieved better geometric accuracy. Forming forces measurements, scanning electron microscope (SEM), energy-dispersive X-ray analysis (EDX) and micro-hardness tests also indicated that a higher strain hardening behaviour was detected for the water-cooling MoS2 mixture.