Tool Concepts and Materials for Incremental Sheet Metal Forming with Direct Resistance Heating

ncremental sheet metal forming with direct resistance heating is used for flexible sheet metal forming at elevated temperature, where electric current is conducted through the forming tool (s) into the forming zone. The electrical and mechanical contact combined with a high temperature of up to 600°C in steel forming results in complex tool requirements and a high wear of the tooltip. Starting with a description of a new process setup, both studies concerning existing and new tool concepts and materials will be presented in this paper. Therefore, the wear of different materials for tooltips and its dependence on lubrication has been investigated in forming experiments and will be thoroughly discussed.