A Software Package for Toolpath Generation and Process Simulation of Incremental Sheet Forming

Abstract

Incremental Sheet Forming (ISF) is a CNC based forming method whereby parts are formed one layer at a time using a blunt moving forming tool (stylus). Whilst forming times can be on the order of hours for large parts, the absence of expensive metal tooling makes this an attractive technology for low volume part production or prototyping. The long forming time can however present a significant challenge for traditional simulation software due to the amount of physical time which must be simulated. Previous NUMISHEET benchmarks [1] have shown that simulations of even twenty minutes of physical forming can require anywhere from hours to weeks of computational effort. This presentation will introduce a dedicated ISF software package, the ‘ISF-Toolkit’, which has been designed as a companion to the ISF manufacturing process. An example geometry will be used to demonstrate the toolpath generation and simulation capabilities of the software. With respect to the simulation capability, the software is linked to three high speed Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) based solvers. The results of running the three solvers for the example geometry will be compared to the experimental results obtained using an Amino DLNC-PC ISF machine.