Springback control of sheet metal air bending process
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Press brake bending is a commonly used process for sheet metal part fabrication. It has been observed that the final bend angle, which is the angle achieved upon removal of the punch, is smaller than the initial bend angle. This springback is due to the elastic recovery of the sheet metal. Various theoretical models have been proposed to predict the springback using the tooling geometry and the known properties of the sheet metal. However, in a production environment, the actual properties of any given workpiece may vary from the nominal properties of the lot. This variation causes the actual springback to deviate from the theoretical predictions. This paper presents a practical incremental bending methodology to control punch displacement to achieve more accurate final bend angles. In the proposed approach, workpiece properties are estimated from measured loaded and unloaded bend angles. The estimated properties are used to determine the final punch position required to obtain the desired bend angle after springback. A series of bending experiments was performed. It was found that the proposed method can better predict springback and effectively control the bend angle variation in a production environment 2008 The Society of Manufacturing Engineers. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
