Deep drawing versus incremental forming processes: a comparative cradle to gate analysis

The evaluation and reduction of the environmental impact of manufacturing processes have become a crucial issue in the last few years, addressing the interest of industrial and academic research towards greener solutions and technologies. Reducing input materials and energy requirements has become an imperative action in the industrial practice. As a matter of fact, strong is the concern on lightweight solutions and technologies for sheet stamping operations especially in the automotive sector. However, the knowledge on how impactful such processes are is still poor. In this paper, a comparison between a traditional deep drawing and an single point incremental forming process is investigated. Experimental tests and numerical simulations were carried out and two different approaches were compared to evaluate the processes environmental impact. The analysis revealed that, despite having higher energy consumptions, incremental forming processes result more eco-friendly than traditional stamping operations; in fact, the impact from the input material is the most critical one. A cradle to gate approach in the evaluation of forming technologies pointed out efficient material use strategies as priority in sheet forming processes.