Design and simulation of compliant sheet-metal handling in transfer press system

Material handling of compliant sheet-metal parts in transfer press system significantly impacts both part dimensional quality and production rate. The compliance of large stamped sheet-metal parts can cause their permanent deformation during the handling, which further induces part dimensional variation. In addition, the parts might lose their positioning accuracy between die stations within a transfer press system. This paper presents a technique to dynamically model and analyze the sheet-metal handling system subject to time varying part movability conditions. Combining the advantages of FEA (Finite Element Analysis) and nonlinear rigid body dynamics, a flexible multibody dynamic model is formulated to incorporate the overall interaction between compliant sheet-metal and rigid holding end-effectors. The influence of holding end-effector layout scheme and movability conditions on the final part quality is investigated. The study needs experiments to validate the proposal model.