Mechanical flange forming in steel and copper foil

Abstract

Flange forming is a process which is wide spread in macro range for blanks with thicknesses from less than 1 mm up to several millimeters. Flange formed geometries are used as preforms for threads but also as device to give guidance and contact face to bolts and axles in sheet metal. A great advantage of flange forming compared to other machining processes is low process cycle time combined with high material utilization. Thus, a reasonable repertoire of knowledge has been gained for flange forming in macro range. Due to ongoing miniaturization of today’s products, flange forming is an interesting process applicable in micro range as well whereas size effects do not generally allow transfer of process limits from macro to micro range. Therefore the maximum flaring ratio for flange forming in micro range for sheet metal foil of 10–25 μm for a stainless steel 1.4301 and Copper E-Cu58 is investigated and compared with results in macro range. It is shown that the maximum flaring ratio decreases with decreasing sheet metal thickness. The resulting flange heights of experiments are compared with theoretical estimations which show a good accordance.