Flexible forming of sheet metal using a plasma arc

Conventional precision forming of sheet metal requires the use of mechanica l tools. During product development, different tools may be required to for m various shapes. If the required shapes can be formed without tools, the p otential reduction in product development cost and lead time could be quite significant. To explore the potentials of flexible forming without tools, various researchers have used lasers as a heat source to form sheet metals. Promising results have been obtained. To investigate more economical and p otentially safer heat sources, the authors recently established an experime ntal system to investigate the feasibility of forming sheet metals using a plasma are as the energy beam and CO2 as the cooling jet. Several samples h ave been formed using the developed experimental system. Experiments have s hown that the forming direction, either towards or away from the plasma are beam, can be completely controlled to allow the formation of complex shape s.