The traditional metal smith has the remarkable capability to form a variety of part shapes from flat sheets using only a few universal tools. Such versatility is increasingly appealing to manufacturers who now seek to diversify part catalogues and reduce tooling costs. Despite this utility, the laborious, manual nature of these traditional techniques preclude them from meeting modern-day, high-volume demand. However, some techniques have served as starting points for the development of new flexible metal forming processes, either through creating new processes that closely replicate the traditional techniques or by automating the manual process. Here, we look closely at some of the techniques used by the traditional smith to form sheets and review automated adaptations of these processes. We find that decision-making elements of these adapted processes are not yet as capable as their manual counterparts, suggesting there is still a lot we can learn from the traditional smith. As such, we look both within and beyond the domain of metal forming at the technologies and the methods that can be used to capture the skilled actions of the smith and how the resulting data can be used to enhance the design and operation of mechanised variants.

传统的金属匠拥有非凡的能力，只需使用少量通用工具即可从平板形成各种形状的零件。这种多功能性对现在寻求多样化零件目录和降低工具成本的制造商越来越有吸引力。尽管有这种效用，但这些传统技术的费力、手动性质使它们无法满足现代的大批量需求。然而，一些技术已经成为开发新的柔性金属成型工艺的起点，要么通过创建与传统​​技术密切复制的新工艺，要么通过自动化手动工艺。在这里，我们仔细研究了传统铁匠用于形成板材并审查这些流程的自动调整的一些技术。我们发现，这些经过调整的流程的决策要素还不如手动流程那么强大，这表明我们仍然可以从传统的铁匠那里学到很多东西。因此，我们着眼于金属成形领域内外的技术和方法，这些技术和方法可用于捕捉铁匠的熟练操作，以及如何使用所得数据来增强机械化变体的设计和操作。