3-Dimensional Description of Sheet Metal Surfaces

During sheet metal forming processes, the friction conditions have a decisive influence on forming limits, the robustness of the production process and the quality of the parts produced, with significant forces required to overcome friction between the sheet and the tools. If lot-to-lot reproducibility is to be guaranteed, an appropriate method of characterizing the sheet surface topography is needed to monitor the sheet metal fabrication process. Newly developed optical measurement techniques and computer workstation technology are presented which enable the topography of sheet surfaces to be described in three dimensions.