Hot Single Point Incremental Forming of Ti-6Al-4V Alloy

The lightweight metal alloy Ti-6Al-4V is widely used in the aeronautical industry due to its excellent mechanical properties. However, it is known the difficulty to deform Ti-6Al-4V sheets at room temperature because of its microstructure conditions. The present work focuses on the evaluation of formability of Ti-6Al-4V sheets using hot single point incremental forming (SPIF) process which it seems appropriate to produce small batches of parts due to its flexibility as it allows a significant reduction of costs and lead times. In order to characterize the SPIF of Ti-6Al-4V under hot forming conditions, a set of forming trials evaluation tests was carried out. The obtained results have allowed identifying the key process features and have demonstrated the potential of the proposed approach to hot form of small amounts of Ti-6Al-4V parts.