NU 2011-098

Inventors

Jian Cao*
Rajiv Malhotra

Short Description

A novel double sided incremental forming system for sheet material forming of complex geometry at high accuracy

Abstract

A novel double sided incremental forming (DSIF) system has been developed at Northwestern for sheet metal forming fabrication process. Incremental forming (IF) allows great process flexibility and rapid in-situ fabrication of low volume sheet parts, whereas the inability to achieve required accuracy and the lack of fracture prediction tools has hampered the adoption of this process in industry. These challenges have been overcome recently by Northwestern's researchers. This one-of-a-kind DSIF system uses a forming tool on one side of the sheet and the other tool as a local die on the other side. An advanced toolpath planning module and a finite element analysis (FEA) based deformation prediction model have been developed to enable the forming of complex 3D geometry with significantly increased accuracy compared with other IF processes. This promising DSIF system can be applied to the sheet forming of different materials, including composites and polymers, for various applications.

Applications

• Sheet metal forming of complex 3D geometry
• Micro-scale sheet metal forming
• Composite and polymer sheets forming

Advantages

• Complex 3D geometries
• high geometric accuracy and formability
• Multiple components on a same sheet

Publications

Malhotra, R, et al (2011) 'Improvement of Geometric Accuracy in Incremental Forming by using a Squeezing Toolpath Strategy with Two Forming Tools', ASME Journal of Manufacturing Science and Engineering, 133: 061019-1 to 061019-10

Malhotra, R, et al (2012) 'Accumulative-DSIF Strategy for Enhancing Process Capabilities in Incremental Forming', Accepted to Annals of CIRP, 61: 251-254

IP Status

Issued US Patent No. 9,168,580