Computer assisted techniques for the incremental forming technology

The Asymmetric single point incremental forming (ASPIF) is a manufacturing technology with a high degree of novelty. Even if there are a significant number of research results reported in the literature, the industry has not been very enthusiastic to adopt and implement it on large scale. One of the main reasons for that is the lack of specific computer aided techniques and tools, which could be used to design and optimize the ASPIF process. The paper presents some methods to overcome this drawback, either by using some general purpose computer assisted tools or by developing new simple, yet effective methods. The proposed methods can be used in the preparation stage of computer automated machining of the sheetmetal parts by means of the ASPIF process and also in the stage of evaluating the accuracy of the manufactured parts.