Investigation of micro/meso sheet soft punch stamping process – simulation and experiments

Different form traditional forming process, sheet soft punch process uses only a rigid die and the other tool set is a flexible medium, such as natural or synthetic rubbers. In this study, a kind of micro/meso sheet soft punch stamping process to fabricated micro channels is investigated via numerical simulations and experiments. Plane strain finite element analysis (FEA) models of different channel geometry (h/wh/w) are established to analyze the significant parameters associated with this process. Grain size of sheet metal and some key process parameters, such as the hardness of soft punch and lubricant condition, are detailed studied in this paper. Finally, the numerical results are partly validated by experiments.