Digital twin–based stamping system for incremental bending

With the rapid development of science and technology, the traditional manufacturing industry is facing huge pressure and therefore requires to make changes and to combine new technologies in the situation of the fourth industrial revolution. Digital twin, which is a virtual representation of a physical object or system across its lifecycle, using real-time data to enable understanding, learning, and reasoning, is the core technology of industry 4.0. Here in this paper, digital twin is applied in the deformation of the sheet metals based on the novel incremental bending process. First, the framework of the digital twin-based stamping system (DTSS) is illustrated, then the experimental related works, including the setup and the working principle, are presented, and last, DTSS is applied to the incremental bending process to achieve the metal plates with single curvature and variable curvature, respectively. Results show that the information on the loading path and punch speed can be obtained, and the real-time data about the punch force and the support force can be compared with the corresponding simulation results in DTSS. The proposed DTSS is proved to have good accuracy, high efficiency, and good feasibility. DTSS helps to better understand and judge the working situation of the incremental bending device, and therefore helps to make appropriate decisions on whether to make adjustments to the novel sheet metal-forming process.