Effect of lubrication conditions on U deep drawing with copper thin sheet

Microforming owns widely useful foreground in micro/nano manufacture since it is very suitable for low cost massive production. The ratio of surface increases obviously with miniaturization of parts, and friction has an increasing effect on microforming. For investigation of friction and lubricant in thin sheet forming, a U-deep drawing process is developed to simplify the forced states, which is easy to study the effect of lubricant on deep drawing. The experiments under no lubricant, oil lubricant and DLC film were carried out using a micro experimental machine. And the experiments parameters such as forming load, dimension accuracy of part and surface quality were obtained. The results show that the forming load is small when DLC film is applied, and it is not affected by the punch speed. The springback of micropart increases under the condition of DLC film. The surface quality of micropart is better when DLC film is selected than that of no lubricant. However, the surface quality of micropart is the best one when oil lubricant is applied. This means that friction can be reduced by DLC film obviously, which can meet the demand of microforming.