Incremental sheet forming of thermoplastics: a review

Incremental sheet forming (ISF) is a promising flexible manufacturing process, which has been tested in sheet forming of various metallic materials. Although ISF-based forming of thermoplastics is relatively new, it has drawn considerable interests and significant progress has been made in recent years. This paper presents a review of concurrent research on the emerging trend of thermoplastic-focused ISF processes. Attention is given to the processing conditions including process setup, process parameters and forming forces. The deformation mechanism and failure behaviour during ISF of thermoplastics are evaluated, which leads to detailed discussions on the formability, effect of different process parameters and the forming quality such as geometric accuracy, surface finish and other consideration factors in ISF of thermoplastics. A comparison of important similarities and differences between ISF of thermoplastic and metallic materials is made. Finally, a brief discussion is provided on the technical challenges and research directions for ISF of thermoplastic materials in the future.