Complementary manufacturing processes

Abstract

Incremental forming alone, as all available manufacturing processes, has limited achievable part in geometry. Thus, to increase the design freedom, it is useful to include other processes in sheet metal tools fabrication. Numerous sheet metal forming processes require the need of dedicated tools, thus not suitable for the manufacturing of unique parts. Nevertheless, some are dieless or use multipurpose tools a could be employed in the manufacturing of sheet metal tools. Apart from the sheet metal forming itself, tool development always requires other processes for preparing blanks, trimming formed parts, linking formed parts into more complex geometry assemblies, and finishing surfaces. A sheet metal tool development results from an ingenious use of a large number of manufacturing technologies, both using state-of-the-art automated processes and long-established metalwork, often very human skill dependent.