Bending of Pure Titanium Sheet to Curved Surface Shape by Laser Forming Technique

This paper deals with laser forming procedure to bend pure titanium sheets along arbitrary curved shape. In preliminary experiments, single straight-line bending was carried out and the relationship between bending angle and laser irradiation conditions was investigated. It was clarified that the bending angle was able to control with scanning velocity and the number of scanning passes. With use of obtained experimental formula for the bending angle, we tried to bend the Ti sheet along given parabola shape with a multi straight-line bending. The experimental result was corresponding to the target shape well. This paper proposed a laser forming procedure for curved shapes which include both convex curve and concave curves. It was confirmed that it was able to curve a titanium sheet along arbitrary curved surface with proposed method.