A Novel Approach Based on Multiple Back-Drawing Incremental Forming to Reduce Geometry Deviation

Incremental Forming is a flexible and innovative sheet metal forming process able to form complex shapes without the need of any expensive die. In this way, expensive fixtures are avoided obtaining a cheaper production, more advantageous for small production batches. Anyway, more than the process slowness, the geometrical accuracy represents the most important drawback today. In particular, two kinds of geometrical errors can be observed on a sheet component incrementally formed: the presence of elastic springback that modifies the imposed final depth, that "moves away" from the designed one, and the undesired bending effect of the sheet, which undergoes to the punch action. Several studies which tend to optimise the equipment and/or the tool path, in order to reduce the profile diverting, were executed. In this paper, an experimental investigation was carried out in order to test and introduce a new approach able to solve the above problem. More in detail, the test were executed applying an additional back-drawing phase, after the conventional negative deformation. Different testing conditions were evaluated during the experimental campaign and critically compared in the analysis.