A Review of Progressive and Compound Forming of Bulk Microparts by Using Sheet Metals

Abstract

In the last decade, the concept of progressive microforming has emerged and developed gradually, which is considered as an efficient and promising method to fabricate the micro-scaled part. Micro-cylinder parts, micro-flanged part, and multi-flanged microparts are representative micro bulk parts by the progressive microforming system using sheet metal. In these cases, many efforts focus on the forming process, such as microblanking and microextrusion. Meanwhile, the quality of the fabricated parts also attracts attention. In this paper, an intensive review on the development of progressive microforming technologies and the formed parts is presented, and the influence of size effect to dimensional accuracy, material flow, geometrical feature, and fracture is also discussed.

Innovative hybrid method to produce ultra-fine grained metal sheets for micro forming

“…Very low energy expenditure needed to produce micro-parts causes frequent use of unconventional methods of supporting processes, such as the use of lasers [18,19,20] and vibrations of various frequencies [21,22,23] An effective method of microforming is the use of progressive dies, i.e. shaping products from the strip through successive operations, until the final separation of the product [24,25]. This method replaces the inter-operational transport, which is troublesome in the case of micro-objects.…”