Process Chain Concept for the Automated Design of Polymer Additively Manufactured Forming Tools

Given the increasing number of vehicle variants and product individualization, design efforts are becoming more and more important due to their share in total costs. The slow and complex design of vehicle components and required tools results in long lead times and high costs. Additive manufacturing is particularly suitable for digital process chains due to its technological characteristics. On the one hand, the suitability of polymer-based additive manufacturing for the production of forming tools for medium-sized sheet metal components is demonstrated. On the other hand, a concept for the automated design of simple additively manufactured forming tools is presented. For this purpose, the required process components, in- and outputs are described. It is shown exemplarily how the experimentally determined data basis can be used for a neural network for automated geometry generation.