Formability and Surface Finish Studies in Single Point Incremental Forming

Incremental sheet metal forming (ISMF) has demonstrated its great potential to form complex three-dimensional parts without using a component specific tooling. The die-less nature in incremental forming provides a competitive alternative for economically and effectively fabricating low-volume functional sheet parts. However, ISMF has limitations with respect to maximum formable wall angle, geometrical accuracy and surface finish of the component. In the present work, an experimental study is carried out to study the effect of incremental sheet metal forming process variables on maximum formable angle and surface finish. Box-Behnken method is used to design the experiments for formability study and full factorial method is used for surface finish study. Analysis of experimental results indicates that formability in incremental forming decreases with increase in tool diameter. Formable angle first increases and then decreases with incremental depth and it is also observed that the variation in the formable angle is not significant in the range of incremental depths considered to produce good surface finishes during the present study. A simple analysis model is used to estimate the stress values during incremental sheet metal forming assuming that the deformation occurs predominantly under plane strain condition. A stress based criterion is used along with the above mentioned analysis to predict the formability in ISMF and its predictions are in very good agreement with the experimental results. Surface roughness decreases with increase in tool diameter for all incremental depths. Surface roughness increases first with increase in incremental depth up to certain angle and then decreases. Surface roughness value decreases with increase in wall angle.