Hybrid Sheet Metal Processing Center

Incremental Sheet Forming (ISF) is a flexible sheet forming process suitable for single part and small series production. To form a component, a CNC controlled generic forming tool is moved along the contours of the desired shape and locally induces plastic deformations. Hence, the final shape of the component is obtained stepwise as a sum of all localized plastic deformations. However, the basic process shows several process limits, such as long process time, material thinning and limited geometrical accuracy. Here, a Hybrid Sheet Metal Processing Center is presented that addresses these process limits. It allows for combining stretch forming with ISF, performing laser assisted ISF as well as pre- and post-processing in one concerted machine setup.