An experimental campaign to investigate sustainability issues in Single Point Incremental Forming processes

Sustainability issues are crucial topics in manufacturing and the environmental burdens reduction for processes is highly requested.In particular, the environmental sustainability evaluation for sheet metal forming processes is an widely investigated topic sincethere is still a lack of knowledge on modeling issues. The main tasks are related to a more efficient materials use and to energy savings.Moreover, forming technologies environmental impacts are essentially process-dependent. A deep analysis of the cause-effect linkages(between process and material parameters and energy consumption, for instance), within each process, would be necessary to properlymodel environmental impacts and hopefully to forecast the proper energy minimization strategy. This paper aims to offer environmentalguidelines for Single Point Incremental Forming (SPIF). A wide experimental campaign at the varying of product shape, material thickness,tool path and punch dimension was developed. A statistical analysis was carried out to reach proper indications about the most relevanteffects of the process parameters on energy consumption.