The thin wall cup products are largely used in industries, it is usually made by a conventional spinning process to produce the cup shape, followed by wall thickness reduction process (Flow Forming) to reduce the cup wall thickness. There is no one process can perform a thin wall cup in one stroke. The deep drawing process with ironing at the same stroke is now being investigated in some literatures, but it still cannot reduce the wall thickness up to 50 or 70%. This article is aiming to investigate the conventional spinning process and the flow forming process; how these two processes conducted and the development in the two processes. A review of the two processes is included in this article. After that; suggestions for future work in the two processes and to conduct the two processes together are prescribed.
- INTRODUCTION Production process is mainly a compound activity, concerned with people who have a broad number of disciplines and skills and a widespread kind of equipment, tools, and utensils with several levels of computerization, such as CPUs, robots, and other equipment. Manufacturing searches must be accessible to several requirements and progress [1]. The metal forming is an important branch of the manufacturing processes, this is due to its ability of manufacturing a part without any metal loss. Many types of metal forming are available now, but the spinning process is the concerned subdivision of the forming processes.
Sheet metal spinning is one of the metals forming processes, where a flat metal blank is formed into an axisymmetric part by a roller which progressively forces the blank onto a mandrel, orienting the final shape of the spun part. As shown in Figure 1, through the spinning process, the blank is fixed between the mandrel and backplate; these three elements rotate synchronously at an identified spindle rotation speed. Materials used in the spinning process include non-alloyed carbon steels, heat-resistant and stainless steels, non-ferrous heavy metals and light alloys.
The process is capable of forming a workpiece with a thickness of 0.5 mm to 30 mm and diameter of 10 mm – 5 m.
Due to its incremental forming aspect, metal spinning has some exclusive advantages over other sheet metal forming processes. These include process flexibility, non-dedicated tooling, low forming load, good surface finish and improved mechanical properties of the spun part [3]. Hence, the sheet metal spinning process has been frequently used to produce components for the automotive, aerospace, medical, construction and defense industries,
Read more: The Conventional Spinning and Flow Forming