The projects of this chapter describe micro forming processes that are studied as single processes but can also be combined as process chains. Proven examples are material accumulation and succeeding rotary swaging, or rotary swaging and extrusion.Micro forming differs from macro forming due to scaling effects, which can mean both challenges and benefits. Problems may arise from the handling of fragile parts or adhesive forces between the micro parts or friction effects.Benefits from scaling effects are made use of in the project "Generation of functional parts of a component by laser-based free-form heading". The aim is a material accumulation that is generated from short duration laser melting. This material accumulation gives the basis for succeeding cold forming operations. The first powerful application for the new technology was upsetting. In the macro range, upset ratios of about 2.3 are achievable, but this is reduced in the micro scale due to earlier buckling of the components. In the micro scale, where cohesive forces can exceed the gravitational force, the molten material forms a droplet that remains adhered to the rod. Thus, upset ratios of up to 500 were reached. The process development was accompanied by a mathematical model and allows for a deep insight into the thermodynamics of laser-induced material accumulation in the micro range.The laser molten material accumulation could, for example, be further processed by micro rotary swaging. Though rotary swaging has been known in the macro range for a long time and is nowadays an intensively used process in the automotive industry to produce lightweight components from tubular blanks, there are only a few scientific works that have addressed material characteristics like the work hardening or residual stress that are linked to the process and machine parameters and the resulting material flow. Due to micro scale specifics that follow from the kinematics, i.e. relatively smaller stiffness against part buckling and wider tool gaps in the opened state, the feed rates achievable cannot compete with high throughput technologies that produce 500 parts per minute and more. One major aim of the project "Rotary swaging of micro parts" was to increase the productivity for the main process variants, namely infeed and plunge rotary swaging. This demanded also process modeling to understand how parameter variations like friction between tools and the work in the different zones of the swaging tools affect the process.From the modeling and simulation, separate process variations were deduced and investigated. For infeed swaging, a special workpiece clamping allows for compensation of the pushback force, which results in a 10-fold increase of the maximum feed rate. For plunge rotary swaging, an approach was tested to close the tools gaps during opening using elastic intermediate elements that encapsule the workpiece against the forming dies and enable a 4-fold increase of the radial feed rate. 28 B. Kuhfuss et al.Micro rotary swaging could become a base technology ...
