Towards Energy Efficiency in Incremental Forming of Titanium

Abstract

Incremental sheet metal forming (ISF) had a great interest in the scientific community, in the last years. A common opinion is that ISF has not to be considered as an alternative to conventional stamping but has to be regarded as a process able to work materials in a new way. Furthermore, ISF could be a suitable alternative to manufacture some “hard to work materials”. Among them, Titanium plays a relevant role. Today Titanium is usually worked by superplastic forming (SPF) or hot forming (HF) in case of simple shapes. However, both the processes are very slow and expensive. In a previous work the authors showed how it is possible to form Titanium alloys using ISF combined with a local heating. However, heating suggests also to analyze energy consumption. The process does not requires large forces but is really slow. Thus, the different heating sources can have a deep impact on the global energy performance. The paper is a first attempt to consider the process in a wider view, looking at the energy consumption as a primary issue. In particular, a comparison among different heating methods was carried out.