Investigation of single point incremental forming parameters effect on the blanks produced by friction stir welding

Friction stir welding (FSW) process is a method for joining the aluminum alloys. Nowadays, it is considered to form the blanks fabricated by this method. Single point incremental forming (SPIF) is used to manufacture complex shapes with high depth which is not possible with traditional methods. SPIF is a flexible method for low production or manufacturing a prototype model. In this paper, experiments are performed on the blanks fabricated by FSW process to study the effect of the SPIF parameters. The first step conducted to investigate the influence of rotational speed and feed rate of friction stir welding process on mechanical properties of AA 6061-T6. The output of this step is the appropriate samples for next step. In the next step, the effect of the lubrication, rotational speed, feed rate and tool trajectory has been studied on thickness reduction (thinning), surface roughness and formability. The results show the lubricant and tool trajectory increase the depth of formation up to 1.6 times. Also, these two parameters improve the effects of thickness reduction and surface quality.