Abstract
Among the most of manufacturing process, plastic deformation method offers a significant advantage in productivity and enable mass production with controlled quality and low cost. From the point of view, micro forming is a well suited technology in manufacturing very small metallic parts, in particular for mass production, as they are required in many industrial products. Meanwhile, Al 5083 superplastic alloy with very small grains has a great advantage in achieving micro deformation under low stress due to its relatively low strength at a specific high temperature range. This paper describes the micro formability of Al 5083 superplastic alloy and its application to die forging of micro patterns. Micro formability tests of Al 5083 superplastic alloy were carried out with the specially designed micro forging system by using V-grooved micro dies and pyramidal dies made of (100) silicon. With these dies, micro forging was conducted by varying the applied load, material temperature and forging time The micro formability of Al 5083 superplastic alloy was evaluated by comparing $R_f$ value, where $R_f\;=\;A_f/A_v$ ($A_v$ : cross-sectional area of the flowed metal, $A_v$ : cross sectional area of V-groove). The micro formability of 3 dimensional Patterns was also evaluated using Pyramidal type micro dies.
