Incremental forming as a rapid tooling process

Abstract

The rapid tooling (RT) notion has been discussed since the beginning of the additive manufacturing processes, formerly designated as rapid prototyping. The concept consists of using fast smart manufacturing technologies to develop tools to process other materials. This novelty allows decreasing the time to market, decrease tooling cost and increase tooling complexity and consequential part design freedom. Mainly due to their novelty and the technologies used in most processes, RT has been majorly associated with additive manufacturing (AM), commonly called as fast free-form fabrication. Nevertheless, incremental sheet forming (ISF) processes can be seen as rapid prototyping processes, and so also considered rapid manufacturing methodologies or fast free-form fabrication processes. Besides, being compatible with flexible manufacturing systems, with parts manufactured from Computer Aided Design (CAD) models without considerable dedicated tools in a short time, ISF processes can be seen analogously to AM technologies. These processes encounter industrial applications not only in prototyping or part manufacturing but also in tool development and fabrication. Thus, it is reasonable to apply the RT term when describing the fabrication of tools for different industrial processes using ISF techniques.