Optimization of process parameters in sheet metal formng by using Taguchi method

Sheet metal is one of the most important semi finished products used in the steel industry, and sheet metal forming technology is therefore an important engineering discipline within the area of mechanical engineering. The development of new sheet metal forming processes, tooling and so on has up till now to a large extent been based on experience, rules of thumb and trial-error experiments without or with only little use of scientifically based engineering methods. As mentioned above, experience is not enough, and trial-error experiments are very expensive with regard to both money and time. There is therefore great need for the development of both theoretical and experimental engineering methods. In this case, Taguchi method was selected to design of experiment using the statistica software version 7 which enables the problems to be tackled effectively; the punching process has been chosen to form the sheet metal. The objective of the project is to determine the optimize parameters. The parameters to be considered in this study are punching tonnage, the sheet thickness, the sheet length and the sheet width.