Recent trends to reduce the size of mobile electronics products have driven miniaturization of various components, including screw parts for assembling components. Considering that the size reduction of screws may degenerate their joining capabilities, the size reduction should not be limited to the thread region but should be extended to its head region. The screw head is usually manufactured by forging in which a profiled punch presses a billet so that plastic deformation occurs to form the desired shape. In this study, finite element (FE) analysis was performed to simulate the forging process of a subminiature screw; a screw head of 1.7 mm diameter is formed out of a 0.82 mm diameter billet. The FE analysis result indicates that this severe forging condition leads to a generation of folding defects. FE analyses were further performed to find appropriate punch design parameters that minimize the amount of folding defects.
