Abstract
Thin strips with varying thicknesses (TSVTs) produced by micro flexible rolling have wide applications in diverse micro manufacturing areas such as micro electromechanical systems (MEMS) and micro system technologies (MST). TSVTs consist of three regions based on different thicknesses, i.e. the thicker, the transition and the thinner zones. Among them, the transition zone plays a key role in evaluating the quality of TSVTs. In the current work, thin 1060 aluminium alloy strips were flexibly rolled under various thickness ratios followed by annealing treatment. The influences of annealing temperature on the microstructural evolution and hardness variation of the transition zone of TSVTs were investigated. The results reveal that the recrystallisation has happened after annealing at 400 °C for 30 min, which induces fine and homogeneously-distributed grains in both of the thinner and transition zones. Only moderate increase in hardness is found from the thicker to the thinner zones after annealing treatment.
Highlights
Miniaturisation has been an ongoing developing trend in the current technical fields [1, 2]
The grains distribution and the grain size have changed to a large extent in the thinner and transition zones compared with the initial condition (Fig. 3), while only a little variation happened in the thicker zone because of the relatively small rolling reduction
In the thinner zones (Fig. 4a, d and g), nearly entire elongated grains are aligned parallel to the rolling direction have been observed
Summary
Miniaturisation has been an ongoing developing trend in the current technical fields [1, 2]. It is a slogan for energy saving and emission reduction, and the reflection of the highly demands of micro products, such as connector pins, micro parts for electronics, chip lead frame, micro screws and lead frame, for applications in micro electromechanical systems (MEMS) and micro system technologies (MST) [3, 4]. Micro flexible rolling is a promising microforming technique for the production of thin strips with varying thicknesses (TSVTs), and has attracted an increasing research interests [5]. TSVTs with different thickness ratios (the ratio of thickness at thicker zone to that of thinner zone) have been treated under different annealing conditions in order to delineate the
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