Superforming is a hot metal forming process that uses similar principles to thermoforming plastics, where a sheet of material is heated and forced onto a male or female form using gas pressure.
[1] The technique was pioneered for use in alloy fighter jets, with a sheet of aluminum heated like "taffy" and then "blown" into a mold by a press system, allowing complex curves.
[4] In 2015, McLaren announced that the 570S Coupe used superformed aluminum body panels.
[6][7] The panels are "superformed" with heated aluminum sheets molded by gas instead of a stamp.
[9] The superforming process varies mostly in the way that the metal is introduced to the form; the main 4 variations are: Superforming process is used to create complex sheet geometries from a single piece of material and this process has been rapidly growing in many applications, including aerospace, automotive, buildings, trains, electronics, furniture and sculpture.