Agile manufacturing of complex shaped bent profiles by incremental deformation

The paper presents a new machine to produce high thickness folded sheet metal profiles by incremental deformation. The novel machine works with two opposing rollers, which apply the deformation locally by repeatedly moving back and forth along the profile to be bent. The incremental deformation ideally makes possible the use of a single tool geometry to produce multiple cross-section shapes making possible to reduce the tools and set up costs. Two different tool paths strategies are presented, to obtain bent angles up to 180°. An experimental campaign was carried out bending DD11 sheets proving the robustness of the process.