Explosive Forming Sheet Metal

Sometimes called explosive hydroforming a workpiece and explosive is placed in a tank of water.

Explosive forming sheet metal.

The underwater shock wave travels downstream and then it hits the metal plate to be formed. Since the forming of the metal occurs so quickly desirable materials for herf will be ductile at high deformation speeds. On the other hand it is unavoidably an individual job production process producing one product at a time and with a long setup time. Nevertheless the working done by the shock wave can drastically change the physical properties of the metal including work hardening or work softening.

Detonation of the explosive forces the workpiece to assume the shape of the tool. In normal explosive forming operations the major characteristics of the work metal that determine formability are ductility and toughness. Specializing in hand forming and check straightening bringing over 75 years of accumulated management forming and fabrication experience in the aerospace industry. One advantage of explosive forming is the ability to use the finished metal in an annealed treated condition before the forming operation.

Hamilton metalcraft is a precision sheet metal fabricator and problem solver. Explosive forming is an ideal process for producing low volumes of very large metal part with low tooling costs. Explosive forming is a metalworking technique in which an explosive charge is used instead of a punch or press. An explosive releases its energy instantly so that an extremely high pressure with short duration occurs at the instance of explosion.

We produce high quality parts and components to specification for a variety of applications for industry professionals. High energy rate forming is the forming of sheet metal by a high energy surge delivered over a very short time. 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. An explosive forming is one of the techniques to form a metal plate using high shock pressure from the explosion.

Explosives can deliver a huge amount of power.