Experimental and Numerical Analysis of Double Sided Incremental Forming

This paper presents a new rapid prototyping process of a thin sheet metal, Double Sided Incremental Forming of a cylindrical part without a die or a clamping device around the periphery of the sheet. The effects of process parameters on part shape, such as gap between two tool heads and feed rate, are examined experimentally with a special device mounted on a general lathe and numerically with a commercial finite element software package, Abaqus. Depending on the process parameter, a truncated cone shape part can be successfully fabricated with two tool heads pressing and moving along the radial direction of the sheet, which is held by lathe spindle at its center. A simple mathematic model to predict the cone angle is proposed and compared well with experimental data.