Vision based formability testing of sheet metal using portable Erichsen cupping tester

Abstract

The main objective of this work is to design and fabricate a portable Erichsen cupping tester to perform the formability studies of non-ferrous sheet metals on the optical workbench and machine vision system. The formability of sheet metal is identified by measuring Erichsen cupping index (IE) using a probe in a machine vision system. The loading setup is modular so that it can be easily lodged and dislodged during testing on an optical bench and machine vision. The major components of an Erichsen cupping tester are top die, bottom die, and punch. The components are designed in SolidWorks.The formability analysis of aluminium, copper and brass sheet metals each of 2 mm thickness is also carried out in the ABAQUS CAE software earlier and able to test it practically on a scaled-down model of 0.2 mm thickness due to constraints in the loading setup. The IE numbers for all three sheet metals obtained from the simulation and the experimental results depict the formability order of aluminium, and copper, followed by brass, indicating the highest formability with brass compared to the other two metals.