Millipede Forming is a novel metal forming method that has been proposed and developed recently.It can be applied to overcome fundamental limitations in conventional roll forming,and,in addition,used for incremental f...Millipede Forming is a novel metal forming method that has been proposed and developed recently.It can be applied to overcome fundamental limitations in conventional roll forming,and,in addition,used for incremental forging and integrated into a strip casting or extrusion process for downstream thickness reduction. In this new method,there are two main principles:①the use of an optimal transitional surface or space linking of the incoming material to the outgoing product,and②implementation of a method to feed the material through the forming device so that it conforms with this ideal space and the required deformation is imposed on it by the tooling. The system described here is called "Millipede forming" because deformation is accomplished in a large number of small steps.A prototype has been built to demonstrate the working principle applied to the replacement of a roll forming process;it can be used to produce simple profiles within a forming length an order of magnitude shorter than the conventional process. In this paper,the working principle of "Millipede forming" is introduced and some fundamental research on forming a channel section and a circular tube is discussed.Following the success of the small scale prototype, research on a full scale pilot machine has been proceeding.It is expected that this process can be developed and extended as a useful alternative to conventional roll forming,incremental forging and within a strip casting or other novel strip material(e.g.nanostructured metals) system.展开更多
文摘Millipede Forming is a novel metal forming method that has been proposed and developed recently.It can be applied to overcome fundamental limitations in conventional roll forming,and,in addition,used for incremental forging and integrated into a strip casting or extrusion process for downstream thickness reduction. In this new method,there are two main principles:①the use of an optimal transitional surface or space linking of the incoming material to the outgoing product,and②implementation of a method to feed the material through the forming device so that it conforms with this ideal space and the required deformation is imposed on it by the tooling. The system described here is called "Millipede forming" because deformation is accomplished in a large number of small steps.A prototype has been built to demonstrate the working principle applied to the replacement of a roll forming process;it can be used to produce simple profiles within a forming length an order of magnitude shorter than the conventional process. In this paper,the working principle of "Millipede forming" is introduced and some fundamental research on forming a channel section and a circular tube is discussed.Following the success of the small scale prototype, research on a full scale pilot machine has been proceeding.It is expected that this process can be developed and extended as a useful alternative to conventional roll forming,incremental forging and within a strip casting or other novel strip material(e.g.nanostructured metals) system.
