• Journal of Korean Society of Industrial and Systems Engineering
• /
• v.38 no.4
• /
• pp.177-183
• /
• 2015

Incremental sheet metal forming is a manufacturing process to produce thin parts using sheet metals by a series of small incremental deformation. The process rarely needs dedicated dies and molds, thus, preparation time for the process is relatively short as to be compared to conventional metal forming. Spring back in sheet metal working is very common, which causes critical errors in dimensions. Incremental sheet metal forming is not fully investigated yet. Hence, incremental sheet metal forming frequently produces inaccurate parts. This paper proposes a method to minimize dimensional errors to improve shape accuracy of products manufactured by incremental forming. This study conducts experiments using an exclusive incremental forming machine and the material for these experiments are sheets of aluminum AL1015. This research defines a process parameter and selects a few factors for the experiments. The parameters employed in this paper are tool feed rate, tool diameter, step depth, material thickness, forming method, dies applied, and tool path method. In addition, their levels for each factor are determined. The plan of the experiments is designed using orthogonal array $L_8$ ($2^7$) which requires minimum number of experiments. Based on the measurements, dimensional errors are collected both on the tool contacted surfaces and on the non-contacted surfaces. The distances between the formed surfaces and the CAD models are scanned and recorded using a commercial software product. These collected data are statistically analyzed and ANOVAs (analysis of variances) are drawn up. From the ANOVAs, this paper concludes that the process parameters of tool diameter, forming depth, and forming method are the significant factors to reduce the errors on the tool contacted surface. On the other hand, the experimental factors of forming method and dies applied are the significant factors on the non-contacted surface. However, the negative forming method always produces better accuracy than the positive forming method.