Dynamic characteristics of a micro-forming machine system are of significant importance to be considered if high-precision micro-parts are to be produced. This is because forming tolerances may be within a range of sub-microns up to 5~15% of the thickness of a thin sheet-metal (e.g. <100μm) being used in micro-sheet-forming. Achievability of the quality parts often vary with the machine-system performance and process parameters being set, and it largely depends on the understanding of the machine and tool system's dynamic characteristics and effectiveness of the control of the machine and the process. Nevertheless, there has been lack of the effort in this field of research. Significant number of the efforts in this field were focused mainly on discrete and/slow processes where the dynamic characteristics of the forming systems were often neglected. This paper presents the dynamic characteristics of an autonomous micro-sheet-forming machine system and its effect towards the produced parts' quality. These have been studied by combining finite element analysis and forming experiment, with a particular focus on the combined effects from the machine, tooling system and the sheet-metal feeding system (the strip feeder). The results showed that, besides importance of the dynamic performance of the machine and the tool-system, dynamic characteristics of the material-feeding plays an important part in determining the parts' quality produced.
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