Microforming at elevated temperature - forming and material behaviour

Manufacturing of metallic parts by forming methods is industrially widespread due to several advantages like good surface quality, high accuracy and good efficiency at concurrent high quantity. As a result of the steady miniaturisation of products, large quantities of smallest metallic parts with the above mentioned attributes are needed. Despite the advantages of forming methods, microparts are mainly produced by machining, because of problems caused by so-called size-effects. These effects occur by scaling down geometry and process parameters, leading to the fact that the existing know-how for conventional processes cannot be transferred unrestrictedly to microscale. One reason for the difference between macro- and microscale is the number of grains within the forming area. At microscale only a small number of grains are directly involved in the forming process, so that the single grain, characterised by its individual size, orientation and position, gains influence on the process. The stochastic distribution of the grain characteristics leads to an inhomogeneous material behaviour and causes an increased scatter of the process parameters. To minimise the effect of inhomogeneous material behaviour, microforming at elevated temperature is applied. Experiments with different materials at elevated temperature show a homogenising effect which leads to a reduced process scattering. This indicates that elevated temperatures are suitable to minimise and control the size-effects at microforming processes. Additionally an enlargement of the forming limits by microforming at elevated temperature is observable.