Review of research status and development direction of dieless drawing

School of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Science and Technology Beijing, Beijing 100083, P. R. China
e-mail: liuxuefengbj@163.com

Received: 29 December 2015
Accepted: 15 July 2016

Abstract

Dieless drawing is a flexible forming technology without using the conventional die to achieve plastic deformation of a workpiece. It has many advantages such as low drawing force, large area reduction in a single pass, high efficiency, low energy consumption. So it has broad potential application prospects in the metal forming field, especially suitable for difficult-to-form metal materials such as low plasticity, high strength and high frictional resistance materials. This paper gives a comprehensive review on the dieless drawing technology, including its applications, principles, deformation law and forming processes. The problems restricting its industrialization, such as instability and size fluctuation, have also been discussed. Precise control of processing parameter particularly temperature distribution of the dieless drawing can reduce the size fluctuation of the product, but the diameter variation is still large compared with classical die drawing. Intelligent dieless drawing technology and semi-constraint forming technology which combines dieless drawing and die drawing or rolling are effective approaches to solve these problems.