Research On Incremental Forming Process

Digital Incremental Forming is a new technology and process that just has beensprang up in the world used for sheet metal forming. In fact this is one kind of pointpress process. During the process, a special forming tool, which controlled by onespecial CNC machine, that moves on sheet metal's surface sequentially. And anexpected article with complicated shape will be deformed. This thesis focused on thespecial CNC system, forming process, and thickness distribution of the formed part,e.c. During process, the movement of the forming tool is similar to milling.According to this, a special CNC system, used for incremental forming has beendeveloped in this paper. Due to the complicated surface of the formed part, it isdifficult to program NC programmes by hand. A CAM method, used for generatingforming tool's tool path by UGNX, has been advanced in this paper. Thickness distribution is a very important factor to be considered in designingsheet metal parts, also the same to the parts that formed by incremental forming (ordieless forming) process. In this study, thickness distribution of the formed part hasbeen investigated. And a general equation for thickness calculation at any point of thebulge type formed part has been concluded. Based on this general equation, asoftware module has been developed to predict the thickness distribution by coloredcloud map. Because the deformed mechanism is very complex in the extending typeprocess, no simple equation can been concluded like the bulge type. An acceptableapproach, based on FEM method, to generate 3D forming path, called "virtualguiding model method" is advanced to estimate the thickness of the extending typeformed part.