Development of a new sheet metal forming technique using low melting alloy 3D printers

The objective of this study is to produce a sheet metal forming mold made from the low melting point Bi58Sn42 alloy which proved to have sufficient strength in sheet metal forming operations by using open-source desktop type fused deposition modelling (FDM) 3-Dimensional (3D) printer and to evaluate the performance of the 3D printed mold for low volume sheet metal parts production. Thus, it was aimed to develop fast and inexpensive tooling methodology for small sized batch production. In this context, initially the 3D printing experiments were performed to produce the sheet metal forming mold. The encountered problems during the performed 3D printing experiments were analyzed. Accordingly, both tunings in print settings (extrusion temperature, extrusion multiplier, printing speed, infill rate, and etc.) and customizations on the extruder of the available FDM type 3D printer were made to print the Bi58Sn42 alloy properly. Subsequently, the performance of the 3D printed mold was evaluated according to the dimensional change on it during the performed pressing operations. Results showed that the 3D printed mold was rigid enough for low volume sheet metal parts production. Key Words: Bi58Sn42 alloy, customization on extruder, FDM, sheet metal forming mold, small sized batch production