Investigation of influence of part inclination and rotation on surface quality in robot assisted incremental sheet metal forming (RAISF)

In incremental sheet metal forming (ISF), by maintaining contact between tool and sheet metal can help in uniform thickness distribution and improved surface quality. In the present work the tool path versatility has been explored by transferring some of the tool-sheet relative movements to the work piece by using a two-degree of freedom robotic manipulator with an aim to improve surface finish and achieve greater wall angles. The robotic manipulator has been designed to orient the sheet metal part with respect to the forming tool fixed in the three-axis machine tool to form steeper wall angle parts with better surface finish. The effect of rotational speed, wall angle, tilting angle and tool linear step interval on forming quality in robot assisted incremental forming has been studied and analyzed. Steeper wall angles and better surface finish were found to be obtained with the help of the robotic manipulator than the conventional incremental forming. The results of design of experiments based parametric study on surface finish have been presented.