Environmental Temperature Considerations in Development of High-Precision Meso Deep Drawing Tool

Abstract

Design and manufacturing of the high-precision meso deep drawing tools, especially in the low mesoscale range, demands close tolerance and high positional accuracy. Variation in environmental temperature affects the dimensions of individual components and final assembly due to thermoelastic deformation. This paper describes an approach to estimate the thermal deformation and positional errors of the tool components using finite element simulation. A shift of 52.74 and 61.79 μm with reference to central plane is observed for the guide push holes on left-hand and right-hand sides, respectively, at 42 °C. The thermal deformation along X-direction is validated through a dedicated measurement system with an expanded uncertainty of 2.8594 µm m−1. Based on thermal error estimation, CNC program is reconstructed to compensate dimensionally during the manufacturing of relevant tool components. A dimensional chain analysis reveals a maximum offset of 18 μm between punch and die axes in the tool assembly. Using the developed meso deep drawing tool, cups of 5.5 mm diameter are deep drawn from 0.8-thick sheet of IS513 low-carbon steel. This paper discusses the thermal deformation modeling, development of software system and experimental results in detail. The increased positional accuracy with desired clearances enhances the quality of the drawn parts, thereby ensuring improvement in the tool performance and its life. The proposed approach can be applied in the development of micro-deep drawing and other forming tools.