Study On Electroforming Parts With Large-scale Micro-texture

Electroforming is a manufacturing method for parts forming based on electro-depositionprinciple. At present, it has been successfully employed in the areas of aviation, aerospace,instrumentation, precision molding, micro-machining etc. Large-scale micro-texture mouldelectroforming is used for making reflective band, reflector punch and so on. Electroforming is themain method for producing this kind of mould.In this paper, electroforming with high-speed liquid, assisted with electrical field simulation andanode optimization was presented. Then the nickel-electroforming for mould with large-scalemicro-texture was researched. The following work has been done:(1)A large-scale mould electroforming device has been designed, including platform, reservoir,liquid filtration system, temperature control system and so on.(2)The nickel-electroforming for mould with large-scale micro-texture has been studied under thecondition of different current density and different liquid flowing rate. The experimental resultsshowed that, the hydrogen bubbles were removed, the grains of electroforming layer were refined andthe accuracy of repetition, micro-hardness and tensile strength were improved dramatically becausethe electroforming liquid eroded the deposition surface with high speed. The optimized experimentalparameters were used to make new electroformed layer, of which the maximum value ofmicro-hardness reached200.5HV, and the maximum value of tensile strength reached950MPa.(3) The finite element method was used to simulate the electrical field and optimize the anode,determining better experimental parameters. The results showed that the uniformity of electroformedlayer with large-scale has been improved largely, with thickness tolerance’s declining to12%from20%.