Journal of Materials Processing Technology 162163 (2005) 156162

Application of Incremental Forming process for high customised

medical product manufacturing
G. Ambrogio, L. De Napoli, L. Filice , F. Gagliardi, M. Muzzupappa
Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Calabria, P. Bucci Bridge, 87036 Rende (CS), Italy

Abstract
Incremental Forming processes have been introduced in the recent past as an alternative to the money consuming stamping technology,
when small batches have to be manufactured. Anyway, they introduce some advantages in terms of flexibility and material formability but,
also, some problems such as the dimensional accuracy decreasing. In this paper, a particular application is carried out taking into account the
development of an innovative technique to produce a customised ankle support. In this way Incremental Forming process has been selected
for the sheet profiling, exalting the role that this technology may play when single complex product has to be manufactured. The producing
procedure finishes with a measure of the dimensional accuracy that shown a good result for the desired application.
2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Incremental Forming; Reverse engineering; Ankle support

1. Introduction
It is, by now, a widely diffused opinion that Incremental
Forming processes are very suitable when high-customised
products have to be manufactured. In fact, due to the very
low set-up cost, the use of this technology may be strategic
when industries require small batch or single products [1,2].
The basic concept, in fact, is to avoid any traditional die
giving to a punch, a set of punches or other deforming agents,
the function to progressively form the final shape of the designed component. This fact fully reduces the equipment
costs even if the particular process slowness sharply reduces
the advantages in terms of cost when a few hundreds of identical products have to be manufactured. Thus, the Incremental Forming processes offer the possibility to implement a
powerful alternative if few products (small lot) have to be
produced.
And this possibility becomes a need in those applications
in which it is clear that the product has to be unique.
The medical field represents, of course, one of these cases.
In fact, even if many products may be classified as similar
ones, the natural differences in terms of anthropometrical

Corresponding author.
E-mail address: l.filice@unical.it (L. Filice).

0924-0136/$ see front matter 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.jmatprotec.2005.02.148

items of each individual move the research interest through a

high customisation, in order to guarantee the best allowable
performance of the product.
The study here addressed focuses its attention on the manufacturing of an ankle support, which is made starting from
what we can roughly name the patient geometry. In other
words, a reverse engineering approach has been implemented
in order to manufacture the support directly starting from the
patients ankle shape, for ensuring the best correspondence
between the obtained support and the patient body [3]. In
fact, the clearance that is usually present inside the widely
diffuse tutors, chosen to compensate the natural differences
between individuals of similar characteristics, may generate
some problems in terms of ankle stabilization and it is usually
reduced using thick layers of compressible foams or polymers. Anyway, the ankle stabilisation function is partially
compromised.
The basic idea, that has guided this work, is to avoid the
use of thick filling layers, manufacturing a high-customised
support that minimizes itself the clearance between the containing structure and the ankle. Of course, this concept requires a special procedure properly developed that has been
set-up by the authors and validated in this work.
In detail, a complete reverse engineering cycle has been
performed in order to acquire the patient geometry and to use

G. Ambrogio et al. / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 162163 (2005) 156162

this information for the manufacturing phase. As production

technology, Incremental Forming was the natural candidate
since the use of customised dies has to be absolutely rejected,
taking into account the need of only one product.
Due to the application of Incremental Forming process, a
particular strategy for the best positioning of the shape into
the forming frame was performed since the technological
constraints have been completely observed. The simpler design way has been obtained subdividing the support into two
complementary parts that may be separately formed. Subsequently the single shells may be extract from the respective native sheet by using a precise assessed technique (laser,
water-jet) and, finally, the two obtained parts can be assembled to compose the final support, by using traditional banding methods.
Anyway some problems exist in the proposed cycle that,
up to now, needs further researches efforts for its better assessing. More in detail, in this kind of application but, in general,
in all the operations in which Incremental Forming processes
are involved, one of the main drawbacks is represented by
the discrepancies between the desired shape and the obtained
one [4]. For the ankle support this aspect is strategic and, for
this reason, a final measure of the manufactured product part
has been carried out at the end of the production step.
The results show a good dimensional precision of the component since the discrepancies, measured comparing all the
3D shape, shown a low value. Then, it can be stated that a
contribute in the direction of the assessment of Incremental
Forming technology, in those areas in which the differentiation degree between the products is a not negligible need, is
given by this work.

2. Incremental Forming: remarks

Among the different typologies of Incremental Forming
processes, the Single Point Incremental Forming (SPIF) represents of course the most suitable from an economic point
of view (Fig. 1).
Other typologies have been proposed by the researches
in the last years. The most diffuse may be classified into
two categories: the first includes all the processes in which
a support is used under the sheet, to guide the deformation,
inhibiting some degree of freedom. Traditionally, wood structures as well as layers of high resistance rubber appeared in
the research centres. The second class of the processes use
different deformation systems. More than one punch, for instance, may give a local deformation with a better control
of the rigid movements; other studies concerned the use of a
different concept of tool, substituted by a water-jet or a ball
bursting, making a sort of mixed process between Incremental Forming and Shoot Peening. As described, in this study a
single punch acts in the investigated process.
More in detail, in Single Point Incremental Forming the
sheet is placed on a three axes CNC machine table by means
of a simple frame, able to clamp the sheet during the process.

157

Fig. 1. The experimental equipment.

The simple tool is used to create the product by a continuous

movement, according to a trajectory that is, usually, automatically generated by a CAD/CAM system. In the present
analysis, the tool path starts from the outside of the shape
towards the inner part and incrementally goes down in the
Z-direction (see Fig. 2) describing a sort of spiral; in this
way, the tangential movement of the tool completely forms
the product profile. From a pure theoretical point of view, a
few words can be spent on the deformation mechanics. The
punch action is localised in a small zone placed very close
to the contact point. Indeed, a wide numerical analysis of the
process, has shown that due to the progressive action of the
punch, the strain path of a reference material volume is characterized by a typical step-trend: each strain increment is
only due to the action of the punch during its work on the investigated portion. In turn, no strain increments occur when

Fig. 2. 3D sketch of tool trajectory.

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G. Ambrogio et al. / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 162163 (2005) 156162

the tool moves along the same spire but away from the interesting position. This result confirms the idea of localised
application of strain and, then, any material point is not affected by deformation imposed in the bordering area. In other
words material undergoes to its total strain trough progressive
increments of small entity.
This aspect results in a strong formability increasing [58]:
the material FLD0 becomes very high if compared to the one
shown in traditional stamping processes, even two or three
times.
Furthermore the formability limit diagram does not have
the well-known swallowtail shape but may be represented by
a straight line with a negative slope in the positive quadrant
[8].
But, at the same time, the particular mechanics introduces
some drawbacks. In fact, the zones of the blank when the
punch does not act, are only subjected to the presence of
rigid movements that, when any force is relaxed, generate an
undesirable springback effects. The latter could negatively influence the final result, in terms of dimensional accuracy and
surface quality. In other words, a large part of the sheet is free
to bend and, then, the final geometry may be different with
respect to the desired one. Discrepancies of some millimetres are, sometimes, shown [9], making Incremental Forming
a not usable process in manufacturing of precise parts. This
undesirable effect may be reduced by using different strategies. First of all by properly selecting the process parameters,
among them the tool size and velocity, the tool path generation discretisation (i.e. depth step) and the lubrication are the
most important.
In this contest, a previous work of the authors has shown
that it is possible to improve the geometrical accuracy of the
final product, reducing the discrepancies up to the 70%, with
a proper selection of these parameters [4]. A more promising concept for reducing the product inaccuracy, is based on
the design of vitiated trajectories of the tool that, in such
a way, create an intermediate shape that will similar to the
desired one just when every action on the sheet is relaxed.
These trajectories may be designed before the process starting, realising a sort of open loop control in which an effective
tool (i.e. numerical simulation) is used to predict the shape
evolution or, on the contrary, a closed loop controller may
measure the actual shape introducing the due correction to
the part program for taking into account the springback effects.
This field of research will probably constitute the challenge of the next years.
Apart the discussed accuracy aspects, when the Single
Point Incremental Forming strategy is used, according to the
volume constancy, sheet thinning represents another relevant
problem. Thinning is mainly governed by geometric relations
that lead to zero sheet thickness in the case of vertical walls.
As a consequence, this kind of surface has to be accurately
avoided. Anyway, the problem may be partially solved only
through an alternative positioning of the shape on the horizontal plane, as discussed in the next chapters. From a pure

industrial point of view, the thinning phenomenon is usually avoided using more thick sheet. Anyway, if the weight
becomes an optimisation variable, a proper study has to be
performed.

3. Design process
Nowadays aesthetics aspects, ergonomic quality and the
product customisation are assuming an increasing importance in industrial manufacturing; a great variety of products
are designed and produced implementing these concepts. In
this scenario, the reverse engineering (RE) techniques play
a fundamental role since very frequently there is the need to
acquire significant data of existing products. RE potentiality permits to carefully re-build, in a short process time, the
so-called free forms.
Using reverse engineering approach, it is possible to create
a reliable 3D model representing everything, for example an
environment, an animal and, even, a human subject.
Many application of reverse engineering techniques are
world wide diffuse in the field of art, to acquire the models of
unique artwork, in the field of archaeology, to rebuild ancient
objects and even in manufacturing, to supply effective models
of handmade products or products whose original projects are
now lost.
These applications are just few examples, but the importance of reverse engineering techniques has been grown more
and more in the last years. This is easily discernible having
a look of the market in which the bid of RE systems is very
strong and the their market share is rapidly increasing.
In this work, a reverse engineering technique has been setup in order to manufacture an ankle support, a particular
medical product that requests a high degree of customisation.
This kind of product has been chosen for two main reasons:
1. it requires a high degree of customization;
2. the need of a low cost is not strategic.
For this reason the attention may be placed on the mechanical process performance, avoiding any comment on economical aspects. The main question, in fact, is: can IF represent
a suitable alternative to stamping for high-customised problems, preserving the same characteristics?
To answer to this question a particular production strategy
has been implemented.
The basic idea consists of a round design in which the
cycle starts and finishes on the patient body (Fig. 3).
In the follow, the different steps are described:
- firstly, the ankle geometry has been revealed by using a
three-dimensional laser scanning technique [10] (non contact inspection). This technique has been chosen since it
permits to do a very fast scanning without any discomfort
for patient as compared with contact techniques. Even if
the instrument resolution is not very high (approximately
0,1 mm);

G. Ambrogio et al. / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 162163 (2005) 156162

159

Fig. 5. Equipment for shape control.

Fig. 3. Process cycle.

- the second step consisted of the acquisition, in digital format, of the ankle data as a cloud of points from which it is
possible to obtain, by using a proper routine, a continuous
surface which represents, of course, the ankle CAD model;
- in the third step an ISO part program has been generated
by using a CAD/CAM system. In fact, a technique similar
to the milling process one may be used, imaging the punch
like a sort of hemispherical cutter. It has to be noted that
all this procedure is completely automated;
- the following step is the manufacturing (Fig. 4). The sheet
is deformed according to the designed tool trajectory and
parameters;
- the last step has been concerned the dimensional control
of the obtained part. Here, as well as the cases in which
coupling with other parts is required, the step gives an important response on the process performance. In the case
of study the utilised technique has been based again on the
laser triangulation (Fig. 5). In this way, again a very fast
measuring process is performed.

In turn, the comparison between the measured true part

and the model of the desired one has been developed in CAD
environment (Figs. 6 and 7).
In Fig. 6, both the cloud of point of the revealed part (top
image) and the virtual representation of the designed product
(bottom image) has been reported.
The subsequent stage, again developed in CAD environment, consists of the overlapping of the two geometrical entities. Thus any kind of comparison between the parts may
be carried out.
For sake of completeness, in the follow more details on
the most interesting steps are reported.

Fig. 6. Desired CAD model and true one.

Fig. 4. Manufacturing step of Incremental Forming.

Fig. 7. Matching between CAD and real model.

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3.1. Laser scanning

Laser scanning is, surely, the most versatile method among
the non-contact inspection techniques. In fact it presents a
large number of advantages, here briefly introduced.
First of all it shows low operative costs, since the equipment cost is nowadays limited and, in addition, the scanning
phase is very quick and easy to do.
Secondly, the system presents a small equipment dimension. So it results transportable and it can be easily mounted
and integrated into still existing production systems, where
the on line control is required.
Finally the data are available in real time, obtaining relevant data that can be used to have information of manufacturing process performance and, if required, to correct some
process variables, if particular goals have to be pursued.
Substantially, in terms of implemented physical principles, two methodologies are used in3D laser scanning:
- time of flight method (TFM);
- triangulation principle (TP).
Time of flight is simply based on the time, which occurs
between a laser beam emission and its reflection in a proper
sensor. Of course the measured distance between the equipment and the target workpiece is proportional to this time of
flight referred to the laser beam.
In this work, on the contrary, a MINOLTA 3D laser VIVID
300 (VI-300), based on triangulation principle has been used.
It is suggested for the measure of small objects (up to a 1 m),
presents a simple construction and is able to work in a very
short time, usually less than 1 s. For this reason its use is
suitable in process doing a complete control of production
without a significant influence on the total cycle time.
In detail VI-300 illuminates with a laser beam the target
surface and a position sensitive photo detector (PSD) transforms the light impulses in electrical current. The following
drafting of a so obtained image allows establishing the right
position of the scanned points which result allocated on a surface in the intrinsic reference system of scanner. Of course,
all these operations are automatically carried out: proper developed software manages all the described tasks (Polygon
Editing Tool).
3.2. Surface re-building
The phase of data manipulation has been developed
with RapidFormTM 2004, a specialized software provided
by INUS Technology.
The surface is scanned from many points of view obtaining several clouds of points that are partially overlapped. The
different clouds have to be managed in the space for avoiding
positioning errors. This operation results to be easy if there
are, on measured surface, some remarkable points (Markers) that are discernible on each cloud.
Subsequently, a reference entity, represented by points and
plans (the so called landmarks), has to be generated and

Fig. 8. CAD model.

sketched in an explicit way. Using the landmarks, the software automatically generates the parametric surfaces of the
acquired solid, which constitute the best representation of the
clouds of points.
Since the surface representation is parametric, the code
supplies the interesting function of enlarging the embedded
volume in order to permit the right positioning of the coatings
inside, if required.
All these phases have been executed with success in the
study here addressed: in fact, how is partially shown in Fig. 8,
an excellent CAD model of the ankle has been re-built. The
obtained model exactly reproduced the real one. Anyway,
how it can be easily noticed, the product has to be decomposed into two or more pieces in order to ensure its manufacturing and assembling. For this purpose a proper subdivision of the surface has been executed taking into account
the technological limits which characterise IF operations and
the need to reduce the number of producing parts. As far as
the constraints are concerned, it is well known that exists a
maximum wall slope angle, achievable in safety condition,
when Incremental Forming operations are considered. This
angle strongly depends on the material properties and the
sheet thickness. In other words, this fact implies that drastic
slope, near to 90 , are not obtainable.
This problem was solved in CAD environment studying a
proper position of the half-product in the working space. In
Fig. 9, in fact, the assembled support is shown and, for the
bottom part, also the origin sheet is displayed.

Fig. 9. Shape positioning according to IF limits.

G. Ambrogio et al. / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 162163 (2005) 156162

161

Table 1
Cycle time

Fig. 10. Final product.

3.3. CAD/CAM system

Once the CAD model of the product has been defined, a CAD/CAM system has been used to generate
the part program, in which the tool path is designed for
the following Incremental Forming operation on the numerical control machine (CNC). In this case two different part-programs have been generated, even if all the further considerations have been carried out only on a single
part.
In this study, because it is possible to accept limited discrepancies in the obtained product, no correction in the tool
trajectory has been applied. In fact, having a look on Fig. 11,
it is possible to state that errors of the order of 1 mm are only
shown in the red zones that have to be trimmed before the
assembling stage.

Task

Partial time

Total time

Ankle geometry acquisition

Data manipulation
Part program generation
Manufacturing
Final shape verify

5

5
65
70
100
115

60
5
30
15

the CAD image of the designed surface, according to the

procedure discussed at the Section 3.
This operation has been generated some discrepancies
maps like the one of Fig. 10 on which it is possible to verify
the process precision all over the 3D profile.
As shown, because a particular material and process parameters have been chosen, only in few points the discrepancies overcome 1 mm of limit, considered like a sort of acceptability threshold for this application.
Furthermore, those zones are not on the final part since
the latter has to be extracted from the original sheet.
As far as the process time is concerned, the partial and
total values are reported in Table 1.
A total time of about 2 h has been spent for all the operations linked to the manufacturing of the half product (Fig. 11).

4. Experimental equipment
A Mazak Nexus 410A work-centre machine has been used
for Incremental Forming process run. As far as the sheet material is concerned, a DDQ (Deep Drawing Quality) steel 1-mm
thick and 290 mm 210 mm has been used as raw material.
The material properties are shown in Table 2. DDQ steel has
been chosen due to its particular formability and strength. As
alternative material an aluminium alloy can be utilised even

3.4. Manufacturing and dimensional control

The part program has been run on the CNC machine to
realise the manufacturing step. The raw material has been a
flat sheet and according to IF strategy, the final shape has been
progressively obtained (Fig. 10). This phase only consists in
the equipment mounting and referencing on the machine and
in the part program execution.
The last operation consisted of the dimensional accuracy
check on the final product, once it has been get off from the
machine.
Of course the control may be executed directly on the
machine but, in this case, this possibility has not been applied.
Thus, the laser scanner has been again utilised and a new
virtual surface has been calculated after a precise positioning
of the clamping frame.
The obtained clouds of points representing the real product has been compared, in Pro-Engineer environment, with

Fig. 11. Discrepancies map between CAD and real model.

Table 2
Material properties of DDQ
Strength coefficient

K (MPa)

545

Hardening exponent
Anisotropy
Tensile strength
Elongation (%)

n
Rn
UTS (MPa)
A%

0.27
2.01
290
50%

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G. Ambrogio et al. / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 162163 (2005) 156162

if the initial thickness has to be greater then the steel one for
avoiding tearing problems. For this reason the advantage in
terms of weight is not so interesting.
With the aim to improve surface quality, a slow punch
feed and low mandrel speed, respectively 1000 mm/min, and
500 rev/min have been used. Moreover, the depth step was
0.5 mm, a not so low value but, in this case, a small stairwise effect is accepted. An 11 mm punch diameter has been
used and a lubricant emulsion has been continuously supplied
during the process.
The blank has been initially placed in a rectangular frame,
which is fixed on the machine table, for ensuring the material
clamping during the deformation.
5. Conclusions
Even if Incremental Forming is still a new and not fully
assessed process, some interesting applications start to appear
in the world scenario. In this paper, a particular application
has been developed highlighting the point of strength of such
a technology. In fact both its simple integration with other RE
techniques and its high flexibility, allowed manufacturing a
medical device in an easy, fast and effective way.
A high-customised ankle support has been manufactured
obtaining a product with a measured discrepancy, with respect to the designed surface, lower than 1 mm.
Of course, some aspects such as the process slowness and
the low accuracy are still to be considered open points. On
these topics the new challenges will be pivoted.
Acknowledgements
This research is funded by Italian Ministry for University
and Research (MIUR). The authors would like to thank Mr.

F. Pulice and Dr. G. Leggio for their technical contribution

to this work.

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