Research Article

Study of micro electromagnetic bulging on a stainless steel foil

¹ School of Materials Science and Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150001, PR China
² Key Laboratory of Micro-systems and Micro-structures Manufacturing, Ministry of Education, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150080, PR China

^* e-mail: guobin@hit.edu.cn

Received: 1 February 2015
Accepted: 28 February 2015

Abstract

Electromagnetic micro-forming is a novel technology of micro-fabrication with high-energy rate which shows superiority in fabricating shallow and concave parts. In the research reported in this paper, micro electromagnetic bulging process was carried out with stainless steel foil, and the effects of discharge parameters and foil thickness on the deformation quality were analyzed. The results show that the surface quality and the forming depth of micro channels could be improved by increasing discharge energy and frequency. The discharge frequency has more effect on the micro electromagnetic forming quality. With the increase of the discharge frequency, the depth of micro channel reaches maximum value firstly and then decreases. The surface quality and depth of micro channel decreases with increase of the foil thickness. Optimum parameters arrays of micro channel with good surface quality and dimensional accuracy were obtained in the electromagnetic micro-forming of a stainless steel foil.