Development of Intelligent Incremental Forming Machine and Its Application to Metal-Flow Controlling of Sheet Metal Stretching

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An incremental forming is a process in which a sheet metal is stretched to fit on a tool-envelope surface made by relative motion of a tool around the sheet metal. The incremental forming process seems to be suited to small-lot production from viewpoint of a die-less forming operation, and is also thought to be important in metal-flow control operation. Although the incremental forming posses large degrees of freedom of tool motion, an algorithm for estimating automatically an adequate tool-path schedule has not been illuminated. So as to overcome the need for estimating the adequate tool-path schedules, this study presents the development of an intelligent incremental forming machine and the proposal of an algorithm for deducing the tool-path schedule.The developed machine is equipped with a laser profilometry and a touch sense for on-line measurement of the shapes of sheet metal products. The proposed algorithm can deduce an tool-path schedule from the measured shapes of sheet metal products, by applying the techniques of neural networks. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm is capable of deducing automatically an adequate tool-path schedule by which unfavorable deformation modes, such as wrinkles, can be avoided. Furthermore, this approach is applicable to on-line adjustments of the shapes of sheet metal products during the finishing process.