Experimental investigation on 3D laser forming of metal sheet

In this article, the relations between the formed shapes and process parameters had been studied for 3D laser forming of sheet metals. The investigation was performed on Stainless 1Cr18Ni9Ti sheet using a Nd:YAG laser source. The scanning strategies were being investigated to potentially achieve a more uniform temporal and spatial distribution of the laser energy, possibly leading to reduced part distortion, by scanning the beam across the sheet surface with both continuous and segmented irradiation geometries. The experimental results revealed that the cross spider scanning strategy could form square and circle sheets into spherical domes. And the radial lines scanning strategy could form rectangle sheets into saddle shapes. It was also apparent from the experimental results that the height of the center of the formed sheet increased with the increasing of the laser power and scanning numbers. The height of the formed square sheet firstly decreased with the laser scanning velocity increasing and began to decrease at a certain processing parameters by cross spider strategy, in which the circle sheet was opposite with the square sheet, and in which the rectangle sheet decreased with speed increasing.