Flexible forming of sheet metal using 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 will be quite significant. To explore the potentials of flexible forming without tools, v arious researchers have used lasers as a heat source to form sheet metals. Promising results have been obtained. To investigate more economical and po tentially safer heat sources, the authors recently established an experimen tal system to investigate the feasibility of forming sheet metals using pla sma arc as the energy beam and CO, as the cooling jet. Several samples have been formed using the developed experimental system. Experiments showed th at the forming direction, either toward or away from the plasma arc beam, c an be completely controlled to allow the formation of complex shapes. (C) 2 001 Published by Elsevier Science B.V.