Measuring of geometrical precision of some parts obtained by asymmetric incremental forming process after trimming

Asymmetric Incremental Forming exalts the advantages of Incremental Forming process since no dies are strictly necessary. In this way complex geometries may be manufactured with a very simple clamping equipment. On the other hand, this characteristic determines some intrinsic drawbacks which penalise its industrial suitability; first of all, the dimensional control of the manufactured part is a still open point for researchers all over the world. Several approaches have been already proposed in the last years to solve the problem, resulting only in partial solutions. At the same time, up to now, the numerical simulation did not supply significant aid to the designers, due to the problem complexity and the very long simulation time when an elasto-plastic analysis has to be carried out. For this reason an experimental trial and error approach is often preferred. An innovative approach is represented by the application of numerical analysis based on a coupled explicit-implicit formulation. In this paper, some results of a wide research on the application of explicit-implicit code for the dimensional accuracy analysis are proposed. Both the problems related to the dimensional accuracy and springback phenomenon after the manufacturing step and the trimming operation are analysed from an experimental and a numerical point of view. In this way, some relevant issues, as well as the FEM capability, have been derived by the comparisons with the experiments. All the details are widely discussed in the paper. © 2007 American Institute of Physics.