Abstract
Microextrusion is becoming increasingly important for the manufacturing of microcomponents. However, this reduction in scale to a microlevel means that the influence of friction and the need for suitable lubrication are greatly increased. This study therefore looks at the use of a low-friction and highly wear resistant Graphit-ic coating on the mold-forming section of a microextrusion mold, this coating being applied by a closed-field unbalanced magnetron sputter ion plating technique. A microcup of CuZn33 brass alloy was then extruded, with a wall thickness of 0.45 mm, outside diameter of 2.9 mm, and an internal diameter of 2 mm. The experimental results in which extrusion uses the mold coating with Graphit-ic film are compared against the experimental results in which extrusion uses the mold uncoating with Graphit-ic film. This showed that the load was decreased a lot and the self-lubricating solid coating facilitates a smooth extrusion process. As the extrusion rate was quite high, smoothed particle hydrodynamics method simulations of the extrusion process were conducted, these being then compared with the experimental results. These result showed that the SPH simulation can be applied to show the deformation of materials and predict the load trend.
Highlights
Microextrusion is becoming increasingly important for the manufacturing of microcomponents
This study looks at the use of a low-friction and highly wear resistant Graphit-ic coating on the mold-forming section of a microextrusion mold, this coating being applied by a closed-field unbalanced magnetron sputter ion plating technique
These result showed that the smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) simulation can be applied to show the deformation of materials and predict the load trend
Summary
Miniaturization technology has been developed and widely used in the fields of automotive technology, computers, consumer electronics, medicine, aerospace, optics, environmental monitoring, and so forth [1]. Some studies have found that liquid lubricants produce a very pronounced size effect, because differences between the edge and the middle regions result in uneven friction [6,7,8,9]. Existing plastic forming simulations do not consider the size effect of friction problems and cannot truly reflect microforming processes. Given this change in the friction mechanism, conventional lubrication methods are often inadequate to address the requirements of microforming; and, choosing an appropriate new method of lubrication is quite important to ensure high quality microcomponents. A smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) simulation method was conducted to simulate the metal flow and the Mises stress distributions, as the SPH research is just at the beginning stage; the researchers use it very little in metal deformation, so it is a new attempt; this can provide a train of thoughts for materials process simulation
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