Design of a direct rapid tool for hydroforming of metal bellows using additively manufactured polymer die

The primary focus of this research is to use additive manufacturing to provide cellular structure, as opposed to solid structure, for tooling applications. The purpose of this study is to determine how effective the sparse mode build style is in terms of both build time and material usage when building cellular structures. In accordance with the ASTM D695 standard, sparsely built cellular structure specimens (crisscross and honeycomb) were subjected to a compression test at room temperature using a hydroforming die. An industrial loading scenario was studied using a finite element analysis model to analyse the stress–strain behaviour of sparse build hydroforming dies with and without cellular features. Using an FDM UPrint SE machine, a sparse build hydroforming die without a cellular structure was created in ABS plus material and successfully used in the hydroforming process to create thin metallic bellows with a thickness of 0.2 mm. According to the findings, the hydroforming die made with a sparse mode build style required an average of 17.835% less time to construct and 12.274% less material than a solid mode build style. This analysis of sparse build FDM tooling performance may be expanded to include tooling use in non-thermal based forming processes.