Hacker Remix

Ultrasonic deep drawing cuts friction by 20%, extends tool lifespan

104 points by PaulHoule 5 days ago | 28 comments

squeedles 20 hours ago

Deep draw makes a lot of parts, including your soda cans. If they can roll it out in practice, this is a big deal.

And yes, to the MP3 commenters, Fraunhofer has many centers doing lots of industrial research on manufacturing technology. The German research approach is to pick a topic and set up a Fraunhofer institute in particular city for that, whereas the US has NSF, DARPA, DOE, the national labs all working Willy Nilly with whoever, wherever. MP3 was done mostly at the Fraunhofer in Erlangen. I’ve worked on CNC things with the Fraunhofer folks in Aachen and elsewhere.

mmastrac 21 hours ago

It took a while to parse this headline.

(Ultrasonic (deep drawing)) : (((cuts friction) by 20%) & (extends (tool lifespan)))

Apparently "deep drawing" is a metallurgic process.

SecretDreams 21 hours ago

It just means you're stretching and pulling in sheet metal to make a shape with depth. A simple one would be aluminum cans.

kadushka 21 hours ago

Deep drawing: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_drawing

Etheryte 20 hours ago

That's interesting, why is it called drawing when the actual motion is pushing or pressing? I would've expected drawing to mean pulling by means of vacuum or similar.

WJW 17 hours ago

The blank (typically just a flat disc) is wider than the finished product and so the metal that will eventually form the wall starts outside the perimeter of the finished product. When the punch moves downwards, it hits what will become the bottom and then "draws in" the rest of the material. Hence the name.

See https://www.manufacturingguide.com/en/deep-drawing for a graphical illustration.

snitty 19 hours ago

Blacksmiths draw out metal by pushing with their hammers. Same thing.

ghostly_s 20 hours ago

It's only pushing from the perspective of the punch.

samstave 18 hours ago

This would be fun: Put an AI bot with an input and a Deep Draw output with Protein Folding logic to make a cellular wall...

("make a deep draw wall based on protein folding

This is fun:

https://i.imgur.com/JRCE4Xr.png

https://i.imgur.com/aEgNRih.png

https://i.imgur.com/4w8H9Tg.png

https://i.imgur.com/FE6GkJH.png

I need to work on it though.

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https://i.imgur.com/ORc6ueK.png

https://i.imgur.com/ClH4Coy.png

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https://i.imgur.com/CTslAxE.png

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https://i.imgur.com/pUhSGho.png

I need to attempt in Cursor or Windsurf Agent mode and have it build a scene

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https://i.imgur.com/vQm92yC.png

samstave 16 hours ago

https://i.imgur.com/xvRBSBO.png

hinkley 20 hours ago

About twenty years ago the big discovery in pressing sheet metal was electromagnetism. It let them make deeper dies, and I believe generate less heat and wear with existing dies.

I wonder if these solutions compose, or if the magnets were introducing ultrasonic noise.