Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
DOI 10.1007/s00170-011-3448-6
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Received: 21 February 2011 / Accepted: 9 June 2011 / Published online: 28 June 2011
# Springer-Verlag London Limited 2011
Abstract Although in the last years a large amount of costsrequire large-scale productions to generate a suitable
research work has been spent on incremental sheet forming payback.
process, industrial applications are not spreading accordingly. In this scenario, the development of flexible technologies
This is due to process characteristics such as slowness and assumes a relevant role: Nakajima introduced about 40 years
limited accuracy. In the paper, the authors investigated the ago the so-called multi-point forming technology, an
suitability of incremental sheet forming at very high feed rates automatically reconfigurable discrete die that used a
to strongly reduce processing time. What is more, a simple positioning stylus mounted to the headstock of a numerical
strategy to reduce the part inaccuracy was implemented. The control milling machine to position the matrix of round pins
investigation concerned a simple conical shape but the [2]. By 1996, many famous scientists started to study a kind
obtained results are quite general. of soft tool technology; the most famous today is the
hydroforming, which adopt oil, water, or other fluid
Keywords Incremental sheet forming . High speed . mediums as the punch or the die as well detailed in [3].
Accuracy In 2000, Ahmetoglu and Altan collected a large review on
the fundamentals of the tube hydroforming; in particular,
they analyzed the relationship between the achievable part
1 Introduction geometry and the process variables such as preform
geometry, lubrication, and so on [4]. More recently, the
The request of flexibility in manufacturing by the market laser forming technology was introduced to the scientific
actors pushes the researchers interest towards the devel- community, a laser is used to scan a blank with a certain
opment of new processes which allow the products pattern so that the material deforms owing to the thermal-
differentiation, being the latter a key success factor in induced distortion [5, 6]. Further technological alternatives
manufacturing practice [1]. In turn, the large investments of could still be derived from the literature. Anyway, looking
the metal stamping processesdue for instance to die set at the technical and scientific literature, it is easy to observe
that many new techniques do not leave the research
laboratories, playing a marginal role in the added value
G. Ambrogio (*) : L. Filice : F. Gagliardi creation. Incremental sheet forming belongs to the above
Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Calabria, processes cluster since, although its high potentialities,
87036 Rende, CS, Italy today it is a topic for scientists rather than an alternative
e-mail: g.ambrogio@unical.it
solution for industries [7, 8]. Actually, two of the main
URL: www.unical.it
reasons why incremental forming is not applied on a larger
L. Filice
scale are related to two strong drawbacks that penalize the
e-mail: l.filice@unical.it
URL: www.unical.it production, namely the process slowness and the part
accuracy [9, 10]. In incremental sheet forming, the process
F. Gagliardi
e-mail: f.gagliardi@unical.it time is usually estimated in tenths of minutes and this
URL: www.unical.it deeply impacts on the global productivity. What is more,
942 Int J Adv Manuf Technol (2012) 58:941947
a) b)
Int J Adv Manuf Technol (2012) 58:941947 943
sj Dp j pj j Vj Raj Eave j
the tool feed rate and its interaction with other parameters
to determine the process outputs. For such variables, the
most relevant interaction diagrams were proposed to
evaluate its effects.
Fig. 5 Material strain rate obtained by FEM for a tool speed of As far as the surface roughness Ra is concerned, few
400 m/min differences were highlighted for the three materials (Table 4).
The tool depth step, the wall inclination angle, and the sheet
that formability does not decreases increasing, significantly, thickness resulted the first order main factors. The latter
the tool feed, at least for the considered materials. issue can be easily justified since:
Furthermore, at the end of each test, the surface roughness
the larger is the tool depth step, the larger is the stair
and accuracy of the part were measured and statistically
effect on the surface, resulting in a worse surface
analyzed. Each experiment was identified by a proper
quality;
combination of the following data as specified in Table 3,
the smaller is the wall inclination angle, the larger is the
where Raj is the average surface roughness of the
absolute distance between two subsequent loops for a
manufactured part and Eave j is the average error between
given tool pitch;
the incrementally formed component and the CAD one.
the larger is the sheet thickness, the higher is the blank
The experimental results were evaluated by the analysis
stiffness and the forces involved in the process,
of variance (ANOVA) technique, which allows to describe
resulting in a more homogeneous surface.
the effect of the single input factors and of their interactions
on the output variable. Finally, according to the aim of the For all the investigated materials, the role played by the
study, a particular attention was paid on the role played by tool feed rate, V, is never high, so that this factor could be
s Sheet thickness, Dp tool punch diameter, p tool pitch, wall s Sheet thickness, Dp tool punch diameter, p tool pitch, wall
inclination angle, V tool feed rate inclination angle, V tool feed rate
Int J Adv Manuf Technol (2012) 58:941947 945
The latter assumption is clearly evident as the surfaces Table 6 Minimum and maximum values of measured Eave
reported in Fig. 7 are considered. For the sake of shortness, Minimum value Maximum value
just the interaction diagrams of the tool feed rate versus
the sheet thickness and the wall inclination angle for the AA1050-O 0.62 0.81
AA1050-O are shown. The influence of tool feed rate in AA5754 0.62 0.72
this case can be related to the different frictional AA6082-T6 0.82 1.10
conditions. It should be observed that the friction tends
to increase with tool speed since the lubrication reduces
its efficiency. As a consequence, a greater drag effect is small (Table 6). For this reason, as a general conclusion, it
shown and this partially increases the inaccuracy. can be assessed that although the effect of tool feed rate is
However, even if the dependence results are statistically not negligible; such factor can be increased up to two
correct, it is important to underline that the range of orders of magnitude without relevant reduction in the
variation for Eave for all the investigated profile is quite geometrical precision of the component.
Fig. 7 Part accuracy: tool speed vs. wall inclination angle a and sheet Fig. 8 Accuracy in single (left) and backdrawing IF (right) at high
thickness b interaction diagrams for AA 1050 speed
Int J Adv Manuf Technol (2012) 58:941947 947
to be justified taking into account the greater distance between the required power is proportional to the feed rate; as a
the major base and the clamping equipment. consequence, selection of suitable machine is required
At the same time, it should be observed how the precision to fulfill the power constraint.
increases in backdrawing case (right hand side in Fig. 8),
Concluding, the use of proper lubricant system and high-
reducing the average discrepancy from 3 mm to about 1 mm.
performance machines can allow incremental forming to
For the sake of completeness, it is important to stress
become a technological process alternative.
that at 400 m/min, using the tool pitch p=0.2 mm, the time
to form one side of the blank is about 15 s. Thus,
considering the sheet reversing using a proper clamping References
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