INCREMENTAL HAMMERING FORMING OF SHEET METALAUTOMATED USING eco CAMERA AND DATABASE

Incremental hammering forming automated using a CCD (Charged-Coupled Device) camera and a database is developed as flexible forming of sheet metals. In this process, the sheets are bent into desired shapes by repeating local deformation due to the hammering. The forming process is divided into roughing and finishing operations. In the roughing operation, the sheet is hammered in accordance with a sequence stored in a database. On the other hand, the roughly formed shape is corrected by hammering at points of large differences of shape in the finishing operation. The three-dimensional shape of the sheet during the forming is calculated from the distortion of grid pattern measured by the CCD camera system by means of the Fourier transform grid method. Aluminum square sheets are formed by an incremental forming machine with a set of a hemispherical punch and rubber die. The sheet is moved by a rectangular coordinate robot to change the position for the blow with the punch. The sheets are successfully formed into a sphere, frustum of cone, paraboloid and hyperboloid