The effect of flexible die support from polymeric foam on the incremental forming of polyethylene sheet

The Incremental forming is an applied production method in rapid prototyping and manufacturing of sheet products in small batches. Usually this process is performed in environment temperature by a computer numerical control machine or a manipulator. Conducting the process in high temperatures, studying the thickness distribution and improving the forming limit of producing parts are the main research contributions in this field. Also, some efforts have been made to increase the accuracy of manufactured parts and two point incremental forming and using of metallic foams have been proposed. In this research, the usage of polymeric foam as a flexible support is proposed to improve the incremental forming of high density polyethylene sheet with the thickness of 2 mm. Wrinkling and tearing defects for both with and without flexible support processing conditions with different spindle speeds and feed rates were investigated. For this, parts with variable wall angle were used. The results showed, the usage of polymeric foam support improves the forming condition by achieving to the parts with higher wall angle. Also, some samples produced in different working condition were selected and the accuracy of them was investigated using a 3D scanner and the improvement of the accuracy in the condition of using the flexible die support was observed.