Feature Segmentation of Multifeatured Freeform Geometries for Incremental Sheet Forming

Abstract

Incremental sheet forming (ISF) of sheets is a flexible forming process that forms a geometry from a clamped sheet using local deformation of the sheet by moving a forming tool along a predefined path. Many factors are responsible for the accessibility and accuracy of forming in the ISF; some of them are forming force, sheet thickness, clamping force, working temperature, and toolpath. One of the important factors which affect the ISF process is the toolpath. However, conventional toolpath generation strategies are designed for the machining process and are not suitable for forming multifeature parts in the case of ISF. A feature segmentation method, which would segregate geometry into multiple features and generate the optimum toolpath with the correct forming sequence, is required to successfully form multifeatured parts through ISF. This paper presents a simple, but an innovative method to segment a component into multiple geometrical features. The proposed method uses the internal characteristics of the STL part file and the number of sliced contours on the parts for feature segmentation.