Investigation of the suitability of a tool element manufactured by fused filament fabrication for incremental sheet metal forming

Incremental sheet forming (ISF) constitutes a flexible production process for sheet materials for small to medium batch sizes, in which the geometry of the part is created via the movement of a stylus. ISF can be carried out with or without support from the opposite side. With the use of dies, the geometry deviation can be reduced. In order to be able to guarantee an overall flexible process, the ability to produce dies quickly and individually from the lot size one is necessary. In addition to milling, which has been the primary method used up to date, additive manufacturing (AM) also meets the requirements for flexible die production. To investigate the suitability of additive manufacturing to produce dies for ISF, a pyramid-shaped die was fabricated from polylactic acid (PLA) using the fused filament fabrication (FFF) process. This die was used for three incremental sheet metal forming operations using pure aluminum sheets and was compared with an identical milled tool. Based on the measurement results, the suitability of 3D printed dies for ISF is examined, and opportunities as well as application limits for such dies are discussed.