Influence of Tool Geometry and Tool Material on the Formability and Formed Part Accuracy in Single Point Incremental Forming

Single Point Incremental Forming (SPIF) has been developed as a versatile technique for manufacturing complex sheet metal components without requiring custom dies. This study investigates the influence of tool geometry and tool material on the forming depth, forming force and form-accuracy of parts fabricated with Al6061. Square base pyramid shape geometries were formed using three different tooltip geometries namely hemispherical tool, elliptical tool, and side-grooved tool. Furthermore, two different tool materials namely High-Speed Steel (HSS) and Tungsten Carbide (WC) were also employed. For all the experimentations, other process parameters were kept constant. It was revealed that depth of the deformed part increased 19% when elliptical tool was employed. Alternatively, it was also observed that WC tools resulted in better geometric accuracy of the parts. To understand the forming behaviour with different tool geometries, Abaqus based Finite Element Analysis (FEA) was performed implementing Chord Modulus model and incorporating thermo-mechanical modelling separately. Although, chord modulus-based model alone failed to explain enhancement of formability, the thermo-mechanical FE model showed promising results in accordance with the experimental results.