Lip skin sector and a method and apparatus for forming a lip skin sector

A method of forming a sector of an annular component, the method comprising the steps of:

• clamping at least part of a blank along a clamping boundary in a retaining means so as to leave a portion of the blank exposed within the clamping boundary;
• moving a punch and/or the retaining means radially so that the punch comes in to contact with the exposed portion of the blank and through a main body of the exposed portion of the blank thereby drawing the blank onto an external surface of the punch forming the sector from a leading edge of the sector to a trailing edge of the sector, thereby forming a partially formed lip skin sector;
• trimming a trailing portion of the partially formed lip skin sector, leaving a bent section at the trailing edge;
• placing the trimmed partially formed lip skin sector into a second draw forming tooling arrangement, the second draw forming tooling arrangement comprising a separate aft re-draw forming tool and a leading edge re-draw tool;
• clamping the bent section of the trimmed partially formed lip skin sector between a first arcuate gripping plate of the separate aft re-draw forming tool and a second arcuate gripping plate of the separate aft re-draw forming tool;
• and
• activating the second draw forming tooling arrangement for engaging the trimmed partially formed sector and drawing the trimmed partially formed sector over a second punch forming the sector from the leading edge to an inlet edge.