Tool path planning for hole-flanging process using single point incremental forming

Abstract

Hole-flanging is a process used to create flanges around holes in sheet metal parts. It traditionally relies on dies and punches, posing cost and time challenges for small quantities or prototypes. While Incremental forming does not require dedicated sets of tools and dies, and it provides more flexibility and adaptability with enhanced formability, and emerged as a better alternative to conventional press forming. However, precise and efficient tool path planning is essential to achieve high-quality hole-flanged components. Precise toolpath planning is one of the crucial and important part in designing of hole flanging process for both through numerical simulations and experiments. The objective of the present work is to generate tool paths as well as associated G-codes using MATLAB code for different geometries of incremental hole flanging process using SPIF. Six different geometries of hole flanges were considered to generate tool path using MATLAB code. The proposed methodology was successfully applied for different shapes of hole flanges. Since the proposed methodology provides unified programming technique in the current MATLAB environment, which performs dual duties, creating toolpath coordinates against time data and outputting a G-code file and it saves computational time and programming efforts. Hence, proposed methodology is found to be better for incremental hole flanging in contrast to previously existed methodology for development of toolpath for incremental forming cases. Thus, it was concluded that this proposed methodology can be effective for capturing any intricate shapes for incremental hole flanging. You should leave 8 mm of space above the abstract and 10 mm after the abstract. The heading Abstract should be typed in bold 9-point Arial. The body of the abstract should be typed in normal 9-point Times in a single paragraph, immediately following the heading. The text should be set to 1 line spacing. The abstract should be centred across the page, indented 17 mm from the left and right page margins and justified. It should not normally exceed 200 words.