Investigation of holder pressure and size effects in micro deep drawing of rectangular work pieces driven by piezoelectric actuator

•Effect of blank holder pressure on thickness distributions.•Effect of blank holder pressure on punch force.•Effect of blank holder pressure on springback in scaled deep drawing.•Designing the appropriate piezoelectric actuators for scaled deep drawing.

Micro forming is a manufacturing process to fabricate micro parts with high quality and a cost effective manner. Deep drawing could be a favorable method for production of complicated parts in macro and micro sizes. In this paper piezoelectric actuator is used as a novel approach in the field of micro manufacturing. Also, in current work, investigations are conducted with four rectangular punches and blanks with various thicknesses. Blank holder pressure effects on thickness distributions, punch force, and springback are studied. According to the results of this work, increasing of blank holder pressure in scaled deep drawing, in contrast to thickness of drawn part, leads to decrease in the punch forces and springback. Furthermore, it is shown that in micro deep drawing, the effects of holder pressure on mentioned parameters can be ignored.