Investigation of tube hydroforming along with stamping of thin-walled tubes in square cross-section dies

In this article, tube hydroforming along with stamping, a compound forming technology of thin-walled tube using stamping and hydroforming processes, was presented to cut forming costs, reduce number of forming and assembly operations, and improve forming efficiency. A simple experimental tooling was designed and manufactured. Forming experiments of stamping and tube hydroforming along with stamping processes in two square cross-section dies were performed for SS304 tubes at different upper die velocities. The experimental results indicated that the better formability and the more uniform thickness distribution are obtained by the tube hydroforming along with stamping processes than by the stamping.