Advances in prototype and low volume sheet forming and tooling

In the recent years, there are increasing demands for small lot production technologies to deal with diversifying needs and rapid forming tool production technologies to survive in gloval competition on the development of new products. The sheet metal forming technique requires the rapid production of toolings which are essential in the forming process. Many new rapid tooling methods are emerging. These methods standardize tooling parts, use materials which are easy to cut by high speed milling processes, build the toolings by the copy method, and apply rapid prototyping techniques. Also being developed are techniques which form the sheet metal with the single tool omitting either the punch or die.