Investigations on a novel double-surface single point incremental forming process for sharp-corner features

Some industrial sheet metal parts have sharp-corner features for specific function, which are difficult to be formed by conventional forming process. In the present work, a novel double-surface incremental sheet forming (DSISF) method with single forming tool is developed to fabricate such kind of parts. Besides, a new compensation method of tool path is developed to improve the geometric accuracy of the inclined wall and transition corner. To better characterize the forming quality, the effects of process parameters on the geometric accuracy of parts formed by this new method are investigated based on the orthogonal experiments with five levels. Besides, the optimized combination of process parameters is also provided by the range analysis. The results demonstrate that the tool diameter and step down have ignorable effect on geometric accuracy of the inclined wall, while the compensation value and feature dimension have significant influences. This research shows its enlightening significance for the fast-fabrication of unconventional characteristics, such as sharp-corner feature.