Review on progressive microforming of bulk metal parts directly using sheet metals (Keynote Paper)

Abstract

Due to the ubiquitous trend of product miniaturization, energy saving and weight reduction, micro/meso-scale parts have been widely used in many industrial clusters. Micromanufacturing processes for production of such micro/meso-scale parts are thus critically needed. Microforming, as one of these micro manufacturing processes, is a promising process and thus got many explorations and researches. Compared with the research on size effect affected deformation behaviours, less attention has been paid to the process development for mass production of micro-parts. The product quality and fabrication productivity of micro-parts depend on the involved process chain. To address the difficulty in handling and transporting of the micro-sized workpiece, development of a progressive microforming process for directly fabricating bulk micro-parts using sheet metals seems quite promising as it avoids or facilitates billet handling, transportation, positioning, and ejection in the process chain. In this paper, an intensive review on the latest development of progressive microforming technologies is presented. First of all, the paper summarizes the characteristic of progressive microforming directly using sheet metal. The size effect-affected deformation behaviour and the dimensional accuracy, deformation load, ductile fracture, and the surface finish of the microformed parts by progressive microforming using sheet metals are then presented. Finally, some research issues from the implementation of mass production perspective are also discussed.