Investigation of Different Factors Influencing the Springback, Surface Roughness, and Thinning for Polyvinyl Chloride during Single Point Incremental Forming

Single point incremental forming (SPIF) is a sheet forming technology giving low volume production with high flexibility characteristics. The flexibility of the process is mainly related to the fact that incremental forming does not require a dedicated die to operate as compared to other forming processes. Polymers are extensively used for many applications because of their good mechanical properties. Considerable research has been reported for the SPIF of metals, but the researches on polymers are in scarce. In the present work, SPIF is performed on one of the polymers known as polyvinyl chloride. The effect of wall angle, feed rate, and step size on springback, thinning, and surface roughness is observed. It was found that the springback mainly depends on the wall angle but it is least dependent on the feed rate. The thinning and the surface roughness also mainly depend on the wall angle but are least dependent on step size.