Process Development of Incremental Swivel Bending − ISB

Flexible metal forming processes advance in association with the megatrend of mass customization. Kinematic processes provide high potential for product variations and production on demand, given by their degrees of freedom and a geometrically independent tooling. Incremental forming processes add up another variable by a freely adjustable density of incremental steps. Yet, both processes require an in-depth understanding to determine the process parameters in relation to the dimensional properties of the product. Incremental Swivel Bending (ISB) is a promising profile bending process which has been suggested in the past for a flexible production of structural parts from high-strength steels in the context of highly variable production demands with respect to derivatives as well as lot sizes. This thesis presents the development of a holistic analytical model to layout the kinematic process parameters of ISB, which is validated by numerical and practical bending increments. The results demonstrate the application of the process layout for incremental profile bending of variable arcs from a variety of high-strength materials. A solution for the characteristic optimization problem of incremental forming processes is developed for the key question if a target geometry should be manufactured in large but coarse steps or by rather small but numerous steps. In the light of a future-oriented highly variable production, the number of reconfigurations of the process parameters for flexible manufacturing technologies such as ISB will severely increase. The presented work provides a process model to layout these parameters for given product variants without the needs for empirical trial and error approaches. This allows to save time and preserve material resources in an industrial application of the ISB process.