Die-less forming of fiber-reinforced thermoplastic sheets and metal wire mesh

Die-less forming of fiber-reinforced thermoplastic sheets and metal wire mesh

Jan-Erik Rath, Thorsten Schüppstuhl

Abstract. The growing market for fiber-reinforced thermoplastics (FRTP) requires new flexible production processes for prototype and small series production, as conventional forming techniques involving molds are not cost efficient in these cases. Inspired by incremental sheet metal forming (ISF), an alternative manufacturing processes for the forming of FRTP with just two robot guided standard tools is outlined. To maintain a locally formed shape in the heated, flexible fabric, auxiliary wire mesh metal is used as it has similar deformation mechanisms, especially shearability, while being sufficiently self-supporting. Feasibility of the approach is discussed and investigated in basic experiments.

Keywords
Fiber Reinforced Plastic, Free Forming, Incremental Sheet Forming

Published online 3/17/2023, 8 pages
Copyright © 2023 by the author(s)
Published under license by Materials Research Forum LLC., Millersville PA, USA

Citation: Jan-Erik Rath, Thorsten Schüppstuhl, Die-less forming of fiber-reinforced thermoplastic sheets and metal wire mesh, Materials Research Proceedings, Vol. 25, pp 37-44, 2023

DOI: https://doi.org/10.21741/9781644902417-5

The article was published as article 5 of the book Sheet Metal 2023

Content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 licence. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI.

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