New tool - a breakthrough in incremental sheet forming

许多高强度和轻质材料，例如铝、镁和钛合金，由于其优异的强度重量比，已经越来越多地用于例如汽车和航空航天应用中。这些材料中的许多在室温下具有有限的延展性，因此将这些材料制造成具有复杂几何形状的片材产品是困难且昂贵的。需要在高温下使这些难以变形的材料变形。然而，传统的片材成形技术，例如冲压，对于小批量和定制产品的生产可能不具有成本效益。这是因为这些传统的成型技术涉及高成本和长的开发周期，用于制造每个产品所需的模具。增量板料成形（ISF）是一种灵活、经济、节能的工艺，特别适用于具有复杂几何形状的原型和定制产品。ISF只需要一个简单的工具与半球形头逐步变形板材通过移动工具沿着预定义的工具路径。可以直接从产品CAD模型创建齿路径，以使用传统的CNC机床执行ISF。不需要特殊的模具或重型成型设备，因此对于小批量生产具有成本效益。然而，ISF最关键的限制之一是它通常在室温下进行，因此它不能制造难以变形的材料，因为它们在室温下的延展性有限。本项目旨在开发一种新型的ISF工具，以促进在高温下振动辅助ISF，而无需使用任何额外的装置，设备和额外的能量输入。新的ISF工具能够实现高振幅和低频振动辅助ISF，从而产生局部材料软化和加热，从而提高材料的延展性，以制造具有复杂几何形状的产品。在该项目中，将进行概念验证实验，以评估新ISF在形成轻合金方面的增强能力。将确定、开发和制造可验证的产品，以衡量拟议的新工具启用振动辅助ISF的能力和局限性。

Many high strength and lightweight materials, such as aluminium, magnesium and titanium alloys, have been increasingly used, for example in automotive and aerospace applications, due to their excellent strength-to-weight ratios. Many of these materials have limited ductility at room temperature therefore it is difficult and costly to manufacture these materials into sheet products with complex geometries. Deforming these hard-to-deform materials at elevated temperatures is required. However, traditional sheet forming techniques, such as stamping, may not be cost effective for production of small batch and customised products. This is because these traditional forming techniques involve high costs and long development cycles for manufacturing moulds/dies required for each product. Incremental sheet forming (ISF) is a flexible, cost effective and energy efficient process, particularly suitable for prototype and customised products with complex geometries. ISF only requires a simple tool with a hemispherical head to deform the sheet material incrementally by moving the tool along predefined tool paths. The tooth paths can be created directly from the product CAD model to perform ISF using a conventional CNC machine. No special moulds/dies or heavy duty forming equipment are required therefore cost effective for small batch manufacturing. However, one of the most crucial limitations of ISF is that it is generally performed at room temperature therefore it cannot manufacture hard-to-deform materials due to their limited ductility at room temperature. This project aims to develop a new type of ISF tool to facilitate vibration-assisted ISF at elevated temperatures without the need of using any additional device, equipment and extra energy input. The new ISF tool enables high amplitude and low frequency vibration-assisted ISF which creates localised material softening and heating therefore improves the material ductility for manufacturing products with complex geometries. In this project, the proof-of concept experiments will be conducted to assess enhanced capabilities of the new ISF in forming light alloys. Demonstrable products will be identified, developed and manufactured to benchmark the capabilities and limitations of the proposed new tool enabled vibration-assisted ISF.