Isothermal sheet formability of magnesium alloy AZ31 and AZ61

There have been reports on the forming of magnesium alloy sheet in industry, but this paper is probably the first formal paper for studying the sheet formability of AZ31 and AZ61 at various elevated temperatures. The results indicate that it is feasible to form products from extruded sheets of 0.5, 1.3, 1.7 and 2 mm thickness. Presently, the forming of a sheet of 0.5 mm thickness is considered to be a technical achievement by industry. There were two kinds of tooling employed, punch and punchless. The punchless die setting used pressurized gas to press the sheet into a female die cavity. This technique applied to Mg-alloy is unprecedented and shows potential for industrial utilization. As the stretch ability was demonstrated in gas forming, punch–die pressing should be achievable, numerous punching tests being performed to confirm this.