4. Forming

Right from the advent of industrial revolution, forming process has been the most important and versatile operation in any manufacturing and metal working industries. Metals are needed to be deformed for a variety of functional requirements in the product or for enhancing the strength and hardness. This deformation produces a complex flow of material which basically is dependent on the amount of force application, ductility of the material, temperature of the material and modulus of elasticity. Deformation can be in the form of bulk deformation under compressive loads or bending, stretching, shrinking or shearing in the sheet metal operations based on which different tools (rollers in rolling, dies and punch) have to be designed accordingly for operations such as blanking, extrusion, wire drawing, rolling, etc. The temperature of the metal has to be maintained such that sufficient plasticity is induced and can be operated with the given capacity of the machine. Few positive aspects of forming processes include insignificant wastage of material, high output material strength, dimensional accuracy and simpler mechanism.