Foil bearings are aerodynamic gas bearings that are increasingly used in high-speed oil-free turbomachines, such as microturbines or turboexpanders. One of the barriers to the faster development of this type of bearings are production difficulties. This article discusses the consecutive stages in the development of a new method of manufacturing a bump foil – a key part of foil bearings. The three-dimensional (3D) printing technology called MultiJet Printing was used to make precise production tools. A new application of the chosen additive manufacturing technique made it possible to manufacture accurate forming tools, as described in the first part of the article. The forming tool allowed the bumps of the foil to be shaped without using a hydraulic or mechanical press. The next part of the article focuses on the experimental tests of the developed method. The tests were performed on three bump foils with different geometries. These tests were necessary to examine the repeatability of the shape of the bumps that were formed using the cold pressing. The results of the measurements are presented and discussed in the last part of the paper. Additionally, a numerical analysis was carried out and confirmed that all the steps of the plastic working process were performed correctly. The proposed method is very effective in forming foil bumps of practically any shape, with excellent accuracy and repeatability. The developed method allows for obtaining the desired shape of the bump foil in order to improve the static and dynamic properties of the foil bearing and the rotating system. In the near future, the proposed method can be considered for larger-scale production.

箔片轴承是一种气动气体轴承，越来越多地用于微型涡轮机或涡轮膨胀机等高速无油涡轮机中。这类轴承快速发展的障碍之一是生产困难。本文讨论了一种新的制造凸点箔的方法的连续阶段，该方法是箔轴承的关键部分。使用称为MultiJet Printing的三维（3D）打印技术来制作精确的生产工具。如本文第一部分所述，所选增材制造技术的新应用使得制造精确的成型工具成为可能。成形工具允许在不使用液压或机械压力的情况下将箔的凸块成形。本文的下一部分将重点介绍所开发方法的实验测试。测试是在三种具有不同几何形状的凸点箔上进行的。这些测试对于检查使用冷压形成的凸块形状的可重复性是必要的。测量的结果在本文的最后一部分进行了介绍和讨论。此外，进行了数值分析并确认了塑性加工过程的所有步骤均正确执行。所提出的方法在形成几乎任何形状的箔块时非常有效，并且具有极好的精度和可重复性。所开发的方法允许获得凸块箔的期望形状，以便改善箔轴承和旋转系统的静态和动态特性。在不远的将来，