MECHANISM OF MECHANICAL PRESS JOINING

Mechanical press joining has been studied for many years in the hope of achieving quality joints for dissimilar sheet metals or materials with different surfaces and thicknesses. In most of the manufacturing practices involved, the workpieces are first cut or drawn by proper punching. Then, the workpieces are clamped together by an impact extrusion between a punch and a female die. This process has been a recent resurgence in the field of permanently fastening precoated or dissimilar sheet metals, sandwich panels made of plastic and metal and pre-formed sheet metal assemblies with screws and nuts. This paper is concerned with the basic mechanism of mechanical press joining, which is useful for designing such joining elements. Some basic terms, such as the mechanical contact chains and their symbols and the joint networks, are introduced to establish a basic theory for analyzing the joining mechanism. Using joint networks consisting of the symbols of contact chains an efficient design method is presented. Some widely used mechanical press joining elements are discussed in detail in view of their mechanical behavior.