Equipment and Operative for Industrializing the SPIF of Ti-6Al-4V

Aircraft manufacturing companies often need to fabricate small amounts of sheet metal parts, as small batches, spare parts or for the design phase of larger batches, in order to shorten the ramp up to production. The materials used by the sector are lightweight and high resistance alloys and their forming requires heat assistance, to increase their formability and to decrease the springback that penalties the geometric accuracy. The work presented here focuses on the Ti-6Al-4V alloy and a dedicated hot single-point incremental forming (SPIF) system with its operative to ensure the optimal geometric accuracy of the final part. The solution consists of a ceramic forming wheel and a heating system with two separate units governed by a common control. Sheet temperatures up to 700°C, with very small variations over most of the forming area provide enough formability to the material to reach step wall angles. The global and homogeneous heating leads to low distortion of the parts and subsequent post-forming stress release treatment minimizes additional distortions after trimming. The implemented concept is extremely simple and executed by the use of non-expensive hardware. Criteria to moderate the energy consumption have also been taken into consideration.