Feasibility Study of Laser-Assisted Incremental Forming for Carbon Fiber Reinforced Thermo Plastic Based on 3D-CAD Data

A three-dimensional (3D) printer can be used to form various shapes in a single process. However, shell shape formation is difficult because of the low adhesion strength between the layers in 3D printing, and sufficient stiffness cannot be maintained. Therefore, the authors focused on laser-assisted incremental forming, which enables the formation of shell shapes from sheet materials, and used carbon fiber reinforced thermo plastic (CFRTP) for the samples. In the study, a laser-assist incremental forming system based on 3D computer-aided design (CAD) data was developed. The system comprises computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) system, which generates a tool path based on CAD data and evaluates the formability between the CAD data and 3D-scanned data, including alignment compensation. The feasibility of the developed system was demonstrated through a set of forming experiments.