Plasma-jet forming of sheet metal shapes

Plasma-jet forming is a newly proposed flexible sheet metal forming process . A non-transferred are plasma torch is used as a controllable heat source to produce internal stress in sheet metals, causing plastic deformation wit hout the necessity of hard tooling. This method has potential for rapid pro totyping of sheet metal parts by reducing development costs and lead times. A robotic system has been used to perform simple linear bends in several d ifferent alloys. In order to develop a controllable process and to improve the forming accuracy, the effects of various process parameters on the obta ined shape changes and on the resulting structure and properties have been studied. The overall goal is to understand the roles of the forming paramet ers and their inter-relationship in optimizing the forming procedure-a high forming speed without damage to the material structure or properties.