Explosive Forming Sheet Metal

Explosive forming is an ideal process for producing low volumes of very large metal part with low tooling costs.

Explosive forming sheet metal.

Specializing in hand forming and check straightening bringing over 75 years of accumulated management forming and fabrication experience in the aerospace industry. The underwater shock wave travels downstream and then it hits the metal plate to be formed. Hamilton metalcraft is a precision sheet metal fabricator and problem solver. An explosive forming is one of the techniques to form a metal plate using high shock pressure from the explosion.

Nevertheless the working done by the shock wave can drastically change the physical properties of the metal including work hardening or work softening. It can be used on materials for which a press setup would be prohibitively large or require an unreasonably high pressure and is generally much cheaper than building a large enough and sufficiently high pressure press. In normal explosive forming operations the major characteristics of the work metal that determine formability are ductility and toughness. An explosive releases its energy instantly so that an extremely high pressure with short duration occurs at the instance of explosion.

On the other hand it is unavoidably an individual job production process producing one product at a time and with a long setup time. Explosive forming is a metalworking technique in which an explosive charge is used instead of a punch or press. One advantage of explosive forming is the ability to use the finished metal in an annealed treated condition before the forming operation. A a aerospace specializes in precision machining sheet metal hand forming check straightening and deburring of aircraft.

Detonation of the explosive forces the workpiece to assume the shape of the tool. Formability has been defined as the ability of a sheet metal to be deformed by a specific sheet metal forming process from its original shape to a defined shape without failure. Sometimes called explosive hydroforming a workpiece and explosive is placed in a tank of water. High energy rate forming is the forming of sheet metal by a high energy surge delivered over a very short time.

Since the forming of the metal occurs so quickly desirable materials for herf will be ductile at high deformation speeds.