Implementing Thermomechanical Properties of 22MnB5 Steel during Hot Single-Point Incremental Forming

The strategy in manufacturing hardened parts used in car bodies is to tailor the mechanical properties. This is done by combining together a high-strength region and a high-toughness region to ensure the crash performance required. Other successive secondary operations such as trimming, joining and welding can be improved as a result of the tailoring process. In this work, the mechanical properties of 22MnB5 alloy sheet material produced by single-point incremental forming have been tailored. For this purpose, the sheets were locally heated by induction during the forming process and subsequently cooled. The sheet temperature was controlled by the CNC milling machine feed rate and induction power. As a result, the produced tailored parts consist of three different regions: ductile, transition and hardened regions. The Vickers hardness values were 583 HV1 and 175 HV1 for the hardened and ductile regions, respectively. The proposed application allows forming and quenching at the same time without transfer and to reduce the process time.