A parametric study to minimise spring-back while producing plywood channels

Abstract Sustainable green manufacturing forms a critical aspect in the current times, where environmentally clean and renewable material, such as plywood, can be used not only for decorative purpose but also for producing particular profile sections. The goal of the present work is to minimise or eliminate the shape distortion through the spring-back or spring-forward (negative spring-back) phenomenon experienced by plywood during profile forming. Commercially acquired 3-ply laminates were used initially to investigate the influence of forming temperature and in-situ curing time while producing U-sections. Statistical analyses using Taguchi and full Factorial methods were employed for the design of experiments to find the ideal combination of the parameters providing minimal spring-back. Considering the structural integrity and the aesthetic aspect, the ideal values parameters were obtained as the forming temperature being 250°C and the in-situ curing time being 80 s, giving a spring-back of 2.93°. The results were then applied to achieve sections with multiple 90° bends (top-hat sections) through a chemical-free process, giving an error of about 6% from the statistical study. They were also observed to experience significant spring-forward after curing. These led to the development of a modified forming technique where the top-hat profiles had negligible spring-back or spring-forward ( ≤ 1 0 ) .