Forming Stainless Steel Sheet

Bright annealed 2r stainless steel sheet without any additional polishing.

Forming stainless steel sheet.

The resulting mill rolled finish in the sheet stock is termed 2b as a finish designation for stainless. Studies on stainless steel warm forming. As you bend a stainless steel sheet the bend area cold hardens increasing the amount of pressure required to finish the bend. Another good alternative is duplex stainless steel which combines the properties of austenitic and ferritic stainless steels.

Previous studies by shinagawa and takuda indicate that warm forming of stainless steel sheet reduces martensite formation when forming at elevated temperatures. The rollers used to finish the sheet emboss the surface finish onto the sheet. Figure 1 shows the experimental setup used by takuda. Pretty much all the common engineering metals are also used in the form of sheets.

1 cold bending forming. Some of them are carbon steel stainless steel copper and aluminium. Traditionally cold bending is widely used in stainless steel sheet and steel parts. Stainless steel sheet 16 gauge 304 2b.

2 3 these researchers performed drawing tests of cylindrical cups made of types 304 and 316 stainless steel. 3 this publication is intended to indicate selected processes that make optimum use of stainless steel s forming potential. Typical automotive skin panels are just 0 65mm thick so 3mm thick is a huge increase in material mass and means the press has to be many times larger to stamp thicker 3mm material. Typically the rollers are precision ground with a smooth finish.

Austenitic stainless steel can be used to produce deep drawn components that require very high elongations and thus stainless steel is widely specified for the production of hollowware. An example drawing note might read material. Unlike carbon steels work hardening rates for stainless steel mean that more severe deformation is possible at slower forming speeds. It should also be noted that austenitic stainless steels can t be heat treated meaning that cold forming may be your only option.

This makes bending stainless steel with common hand tools difficult and a sheet metal brake is often required although one technique to bend stainless steel using hand tools works well on shorter length bends. Hydroforming stainless steel is a cost effective process that results in a higher quality product than die stamping methods can produce. These alloys also tend to respond well to cold forming. Stainless steel sheets are cut into blanks then placed in the hydroforming press one at a time over a punch.

The fact that the surface finish survives the forming operation makes the combination of the material and the forming technique cost effective. As the punch rises. At the end of the article we will be discussing different forming methods used with sheet metal. So elon is wrong about forming stainless steel.

In addition elon has specified 3mm thick stainless steel which greatly increases forming tonnages required.