An investigation of cold extruding hollow flanged parts from sheet metals

Hole flanging with cold extrusion can avoid necking or fracture as encountered in conventional sheet metal-forming operations. Substantial flange height and lip thickness can be achieved with flange extrusion because the forming load is compressive. Using a hydraulic press, flange extrusions of 5 and 10 mm inner diameters were produced in pieces of cup-shaped galvanized steel, as well as aluminum 5052 workpieces with a thickness of 0.8 mm, both of which had a pre-hole on the cup bottom. As the punch load was exerted on the cup rim, a clamping force was applied to suppress dilation on the cup bottom.The experiments showed that with sufficient clamping force, significant flange height could be extruded. The utmost extruded flange of 5 mm i.d. was 6 times larger than that drawn from the conventional method, whereas that of 10 mm i.d. was 3.8 times larger than that drawn from the conventional method. However, no flange was extruded and buckling occurred on the cup bottom when the clamping force was insufficient. The experiments confirmed the results predicted by the FE simulation. For a selected flange inner diameter, the ratio of the extruded flange height to the increase in cup bottom thickness was directly related to the normalized clamping pressure, i.e. the ratio of clamping pressure to workpiece yield strength. Therefore, both the application of a larger clamping force or the use of low-strength workpiece materials facilitated the extrusion of flange while suppressing the dilation of the cup bottom. Flange extrusions with a larger diameter correspond to a smaller extrusion ratio or reduction of area. Experiments showed that a significant flange height could be extruded with a 10 mm inner diameter for both galvanized-steel and aluminum 5052, while results for extrusions with a 5 mm inner diameter were unfavorable when using galvanized-steel. High-strength materials and a high extrusion ratio required greater clamping force for the flange extrusion process, and consequently caused excessive forming load on the forming dies as well as on the hydraulic press, thus rendering the process less effective.