Additive-incremental forming hybrid manufacturing technique to improve customised part performance

Hybrid manufacturing is a new production strategy based on the combination of various processes to manufacture components more efficiently in terms of quality, productivity, and/or sustainability. Combinations of subtractive, forming, and additive manufacturing processes can follow one another to produce the desired parts. Hence, both part complexity and performance can increase significantly. The highlighted strategy has been tested by considering two different processes that are typically utilised for small batches of customised parts. Specifically, selective laser sintering has been used to thicken sheets locally, which are subsequently formed by single point incremental forming. This process combination can result in the development of a rapid prototyping technique that exploits the peculiarities of both the utilised processes, and thus allows for the manufacturing of more complex and/or higher quality parts, in a more flexible manner. In the research herein reported, various solutions have been tested to analyse the impact of the proposed hybrid manufacturing strategy on the a) dimensional accuracy, in terms of deviation from the nominal shape, b) quality, in terms of thickness distribution, and c) part complexity, in terms of the obtainable three-dimensional shape, of stainless-steel-formed sheets.