Investigation of the suitability of a fused filament fabricated tool for incremental sheet metal forming

Abstract

Incremental sheet forming (ISF) is a flexible manufacturing process for sheet metal parts in small to medium quantities. Successive movements of a stylus create the geometry of the sheet metal part. ISF can be performed with or without a counter tool. By using counter tools, the geometry deviation of the formed sheet metal part can be reduced. To achieve the broader application of ISF, counter tools must be cost-effective, fast, and individually producible, even for batch sizes of only one part. In addition to milling, which has been the main method used to date, additive manufacturing (AM) also makes it possible to meet these requirements for flexible counter tool production. To investigate the suitability of AM for the production of counter tools for the ISF and to learn more about the load on the counter tool, a cylindrical counter tool made of polylactic acid (PLA) was produced using the fused filament fabrication (FFF) process. This counter tool was used for the ISF of drawing steel. Based on the force measurement results, a first step towards suitability evaluation of 3D-printed counter tools for ISF was taken, and possibilities, as well as application limits for such counter tools were discussed.