When manufacturers need to create low-volume parts with deep-drawn, long and complex shapes, the fluid cell forming process is an ideal choice. Fast and economical, fluid cell forming enables medical, aerospace and lighting manufacturers to prototype or output complex parts from many different sheet metals.
Fluid cell forming employs the use of a fluid-cell press, or bag press, to evenly form blanks around tooling. Using hydraulic fluid, up to 11,600 p.s.i. of pressure is exerted onto a flexible rubber diaphragm that in turn forms the sheet metal around the tooling. This enables the creation of complex-shaped components, including negative lips, that can be difficult to form with other methods.
Fast Tooling, Faster Prototyping
Fluid cell forming is an ideal choice for parts because it offers a flexibility that is hard to find with other forming methods. Unlike traditional stamp forming methods, only one die is required for fluid cell forming. Additionally, fluid cell tooling can be made from variety of materials, such as steel, aluminum or even plastic. This reduces the time it takes to create a die, while cutting costs significantly.
Fluid cell forming is especially useful when bridging the gap between prototyping new parts and large-scale production. That’s because fluid cell forming offers short lead times, low costs and precision results. At Jones Metal, our fluid cell forming capabilities are often employed to help aerospace, medical and lighting manufacturers produce limited production runs of shallow components, small parts, large panels and complex shapes. This helps OEMs bridge the pre-production to production gap with inventory while providing them the time needed to bring full-scale production up to speed.
Part Forming Done Right
Medical equipment, commercial lighting, aerospace and power generation component forming challenges are often easily solved with the use of fluid cell forming, which makes it an ideal solution. JMP has the expertise and equipment to help you solve your engineering challenges, and our outputs are always high quality, as evidenced by the fact that we are Nadcap approved, ISO 9001:2000 Certified (Without Design) and ITAR registered.
To learn if fluid cell forming is the best choice to meet your sheet metal forming challenges, or to submit a drawing or an RFQ, contact us.
How may we help? 888-479-9566