Dieless incremental micro-forming of miniature shell objects of aluminum foils

Single-point incremental forming of thin aluminum foils, which did not require any die and any backing plate, was developed for fabricating customized parts of thin shell miniature objects. Thin aluminum foils were deformed incrementally using a round-tip single point tool on a desktop type of milling machine controlled with a personal computer. It was found that an aluminum foil 12 μm thick was much smaller in forming limit than an aluminum foil 50 μm thick when a single point tool with a tip radius of 0.5 mm was not rotated, but its forming limit was improved greatly by rotating the tool up to 20,000 rpm. Measured forming forces revealed that the tool rotation decreases the in-plane forces by approximately 50%. Hydrodynamic lubrication at the interface between a rotating tool and aluminum foil must have had a direct and favorable influence on the forming process, while increasing the forming limit of the thinner foil. It was also found that the optimum stepwise axial feed was found to be around the value of foil thickness. Then, incremental forming of arrays of dots 0.1 mm in diameter, miniature pyramids, a miniature car and miniature letters was performed successfully under the optimized conditions at arbitrary positions of 12-μm-thick foils.