Single point incremental forming

Traditional sheet metal forming requires expensive dedicated dies, both positive and negative dies, where each die mimics one side of the desired part. Modem manufacturing industry strives to be flexible and to respond to customer needs. This trend toward flexibility requires new sheet metal forming methods. One method is Single Point Incremental Forming (SPIF) which does not dedicated dies. SPIF is a sheet metal forming process that was first introduced in the early 1990s. It has gone through a variety of changes since then. This paper will partially review the genesis of SPIF and then discuss experimental results for the parameters: tool size, step size, material type, material thickness and shape. The data will be presented as two dimensional and three dimensional statistical plots, which are created with software called JMP. New information is presented in the form of surface response plots.