BLANKSOFT: a computer aided manufacturing system for metal blanking processes design

Sheet-metal working by material shearing mechanisms is one of the most frequently used processes in industry. This paper presents industrial software called BLANKSOFT dedicated to sheet metal blanking process optimization. The code allows for the prediction of the geometry of the sheared profile, the mechanical state of the sheared zone, the burr height, the force-penetration curve, and the wear evolution of the punch versus the number of the blanking cycles. The paper is concerned with the presentation of BLANKSOFT. This includes the industrial interest as well as the potential of the program which are discussed in the light of a comparison with experiments. The program is written in Visual Basic language and enables to combine numerical computation and graphical illustration. The approach is based on an original theoretical investigation formulated from plasticity theories. This program is designed by considering several factors, such as material and geometry of the product as well as the wear state of the tool. The numerical results obtained by the proposed program are compared with experimental ones to verify the validity of the proposed software.

I. INTRODUCTION

In a sheet metal forming operation, an initial blanked flat sheet is deformed into a desired sheet metal part. The operation is carried out using special technique like stamping, deep drawing and bending. In general, the initial flat sheet is obtained by blanking/punching process. The design of such processes is still based largely on experience. Its a time consuming and expensive task. The industry is therefore highly interested in methods that allow to reduce trial and error to shorten cycles when designing a blanking process.