INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PRECISION ENGINEERING AND MANUFACTURING Vol. 16, No. 3, pp.

589-595 MARCH 2015 / 589

DOI: 10.1007/s12541-015-0079-0

Lubrication Aspects during Single Point Incremental

Forming for Steel and Aluminum Materials

Nelson Gil Azevedo1, João Sá Farias1, Ricardo Pereira Bastos1, Pedro Teixeira2,
João Paulo Davim1, and Ricardo Jose Alves de Sousa1,#
1 TEMA, Center for Mechanical Technology and Automation, Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Aveiro, 3810-193, Portugal
2 INEGI, Faculty of Engineering, University of Porto, 4000, Porto, Portugal
# Corresponding Author / E-mail: rsousa@ua.pt, TEL: +351 234378150, FAX: +351 234370193

KEYWORDS: Incremental forming, Lubrication, Roughness, Steel, Aluminum, Forming forces

Over the past few years, Single Point Incremental Forming (SPIF) has been mainly studied regarding formability, forming forces
involved and the dimensional accuracy achieved in the final product. As in any other metal forming process, the choice of the
lubricant depends on the deformation mechanisms that characterize the process, the roughness of the material involved and on the
process parameters. Despite the recent developments on SPIF, little attention has been paid to the influence of lubricants used during
the process. This study intends to evaluate the influence of the type of lubricant used in SPIF process, particularly on aluminum 1050
and DP780 steel sheets, in what concerns the surface quality of final parts. To do so, tests were performed employing a range of
distinct lubricants. Roughness tests were conducted to evaluate surface quality. Results show opposite trends for aluminum and steel
in the sense that lubricants that guarantee better results in aluminum proved to have worse results in steel and vice-versa.

Manuscript received: June 15, 2014 / Revised: November 3, 2014 / Accepted: December 21, 2014

that prevents necking. The SPIF technology provides significant

NOMENCLATURE
Ra = arithmetic mean roughness (DIN4768)
Rt = total height of the roughness profile (DIN4768)
RzD = mean roughness depth (DIN4768)
1. Introduction
Nowadays market demands to reduce manufacturing costs and
design time results in more competitive solutions, which promote the
development of new processes and technologies. In order to address the
needs for flexible and small production batches, some innovative
forming technologies emerged, such as the Single Point Incremental
Forming (SPIF). In this dieless process, a sheet is clamped without the
need of any other kind of support, while the forming tool follows
contours inwards, shaping the plate down gradually.1,2
This process has shown to promote higher formability (when
compared to deep drawing for instance) given its localized deformation
benefits to manufacture small batches and prototypes, once it is not
necessary to spend time and money in tooling. However, because of its
particularities the process is still not fully understood, mainly regarding
springback that affects the dimensional accuracy of the formed parts,
the forces involved and the deformation mechanisms. The first
approach to circumvent these problems is to adjust the tool path.
Another possibility is to vary the tool diameter, the value of the vertical
increments (step down) or even the tool travel speed.3 Concerning
surface finish and forming forces, it is crucial to study the influence of
lubrication in this process. Even if many developments have been
carried out in the field of incremental sheet forming,4-11 to name just a
few, there are still few studies devoted to the influence of lubrication
on the surface quality of the final product and on the resulting forming
forces. The use of lubricants is essential at the interface between two
or more components of most mechanisms (and on any forming process)
giving tools a longer life by reducing friction and wear, improving heat
distribution and removing waste materials.12,13 Lubricants differ in
many characteristics, such as viscosity or density. In classic press-
forming, the study of lubricants are very well studied.
Friction evaluation during most classical (press-forming) sheet

© KSPE and Springer 2015

 590 / MARCH 2015 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PRECISION ENGINEERING AND MANUFACTURING Vol. 16, No. 3

Table 1 List of lubricants studied

Viscosity at Density Melting
Lubricant Type
40ºC [mm2/s] [kg/l] Point [ºC]
Repsol SAE 30 Mineral Oil 105 0.884 215
Total Finarol B 5746 Mineral Oil 9.75 0.904 150
Moly Slip AS 40 Paste 1.76 190
Weicon AL-M
Paste 185 0.92
(allround)
Moly Slip HSB
Paste N/A N/A 195
(high speed bearing)

Table 2 List of lubricants: pastes components

Lubricant Base Solid Lubricant
Moly Slip AS 40 Petroleum oil MoS2 (40%)
Weicon AL-M
Mineral oil MoS2/Li
(allround)
Fig. 1 Lubricants studied
Moly Slip HSB MoS2/Molysplip special /
Lithium
(high speed bearing) E.P compounds (9%)

metal forming operations can be a very complex task as documented in Table 3 Sheet’s material
Figueiredo et al..14 Tisza and Fülöp12 classified friction tests for sheet
Density Young Modulus Tensile Yield Hardness
Material
metal forming as a function of the main performed operations such as [g/cm3] [MPa] Stress [MPa] [HV]
stretch forming, deep drawing or stretch drawing. Aluminum
2.7 70000 250 40
However, it is well accepted that during incremental forming AA1050
process, deformation mechanisms and forces involved considerably Steel DP780 7.8 210000 780 258
differ from classical sheet manufacturing processes, with increased
Table 4 Initial sheet’s roughness
formability.2,4,6,9 Even so, there is not much discussion in literature
about such differences and its impact on lubricant choice. Material Ra [µm] RzD [µm] Rt [µm]
Aluminum AA1050 0,205 1,012 1.545
In what concerns materials, Hussain et al.15 studied the applicability
DP780 steel 0.710 3.817 5.205
of various lubricants in incremental forming of pure titanium. Zhang et
al.16 analyzed the effect of lubrication in the hot forming of magnesium Table 5 Average roughness values for formed aluminum 1050
alloy finding that a solid graphite or ceramic powder (MoS2) delivers
Lubricant Ra [µm] RzD [µm] Rt [µm]
outstanding results, as well as a self-lubricating effect. For soft metals AL-M 0,995 4,955 7,014
such as aluminum and low carbon steel, mineral oils will suffice to AS-40 1,128 5,672 7,492
produce components with an acceptable surface quality.3 On the other HSB 1,043 5,275 8,672
hand, solid lubricants are very effective due to their wide temperature SAE30 0,873 4,417 7,485
range, from room temperature to circa 400°C. However, they are
generally coated with a binder on the work piece by conventional Table 6 Average roughness values for formed DP 780 Steel
spraying, which adversely affect their characteristics and life span.17 Lubricant Ra [µm] RzD [µm] Rt [µm]
Finally, in a master thesis carried on the University of Porto AL-M 0,368 1,850 2,490
(Suriyaprakan,18) AS-40 grease was employed in SPIF yielding good AS-40 0,215 1,285 1,910
HSB 0,295 1,788 2,415
results.
SAE30 0,473 2,688 4,405
In the remaining incremental forming studies, the use of lubricant in
Finarol 0,210 1,230 2,055
tests is just referred without ever describing its type or its influence on
the obtained results. It is clearly evident that there is a lack of
information on the role played by the lubricant during the forming campaign) the various different possibilities, choosing three greases/
process. In this work, several lubricants will be tested in what concerns pastes and two oils that, despite being both of mineral origin, contain
the surface finish obtained using SPIF technology, and for two different very distinct viscosity properties. The properties of the selected
materials: Steel (DP780) and Aluminum (AA1050-T4). lubricants are described in Tables 1 and 2.
On sheet’s materials side, a major amount of research carried out in
incremental forming uses aluminum or steel sheets. In this work, 1mm
2. Experimental Methodology thick sheets of 1050 aluminum series and high strength dual phase steel
DP 780 were used, representing soft and hard materials, with
2.1 Lubricants and metal sheets mechanical properties described in Table 3.
There is a high number of different lubricant brands, and a number Finally, Table 4 gives the initial roughness in terms of Ra, Rt and
of distinct products with different characteristics (Fig. 1). Here, it was RzD (see nomenclature). It will be interesting to check these values
tried to cover (keeping a reasonable number of tests on the experimental against the ones measured in formed parts (Tables 5 and 6).
 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PRECISION ENGINEERING AND MANUFACTURING Vol. 16, No. 3
Fig. 2 SPIFA incremental forming machine19
Fig. 3 Incrementally forming conical parts
2.2 Incremental forming machine
The SPIF-A machine (“A” named after Aveiro) represents an
improvement over adapted NC milling machines and serial kinematics
robot arms, as possessing higher structural stiffness, low inertia and 6
degrees of freedom thanks to a custom built Stewart platform (Alves de
Sousa et al.,19). The machine was designed to support compressive and
lateral loads of 13 kN and 6.5 kN respectively, with a working area of
1000 mm × 1000 mm and a maximum vertical displacement of 400 mm.
The kinematic system implemented in SPIF-A is presented in Fig. 2.
The tests consisted on incrementally forming truncated cones, 40
mm deep, diameter 120 mm and wall angle of 45°. Other more complex
geometries were studied but were discarded in favor of the cone, due
to its simplicity, faster execution time and more straightforward analysis.
Fig. 3 illustrates the geometries produced.
The tool used in the experiments is made out of cold working steel
MARCH 2015 / 591
Fig. 4 Simplified scheme for tool and toolpath
Fig. 5 Measuring surface roughness
(X210CrW12) which, according to Jeswiet et. al.,2 is a suitable material
for most SPIF applications. The tool was also heat treated, resulting in
an increased hardness to 58HRc. Its geometry, consisting on a spherical
tip with a 6 mm radius, can be seen in Figs. 3 and 4.
The trajectory performed by the tool consists of spirals with a
vertical increment of 0.3 mm and a control Scallop 0.1 mm (Fig. 4).
This type of tool path allows continuous vertical increment along the
geometry of the part, thus preventing the occurrence of peak forces.
3. Results and Discussion
In all tests, the lubricant was applied directly on the sheet surface
right in the beginning of the forming process. In fact, a small amount
of lubricant is required when the sheet is placed horizontally as in SPIF-
A case. The lubricant follows naturally by gravity the toolpath during
the whole forming process. After forming and unclamping, roughness
tests were conducted using an electromechanical Hommelwerke T1000
rugosimeter (Fig. 5).
A support was created to ensure the parallelism of the wall and the
fixed rugosimeter’s needle. Each piece went through 8 roughness tests
at intervals of 45 around its center line. In fact, due to material anisotropy
it is possible to detect different material flows on the formed cone wall
(Fig. 6), with distinct stretching conditions. However, such differences
proved to not having a direct influence on the final roughness.
3.1 Roughness measurements
Standard roughness parameters were analyzed for each lubricant.
 592 / MARCH 2015
Fig. 6 Measuring the final shape of the formed truncated cone
Fig. 7 Surface quality of formed 1050 aluminum cones for lubricants
SAE 30 and Finarol B5746, respectively
Fig. 8 Surface quality of formed DP 780 steel cones for lubricants
Finarol B5746 and SAE 30, respectively
Parameters measured according to DIN4768 standard were the arithmetic
mean roughness (Ra), the total height of the roughness profile (Rt) and
the mean roughness depth (RzD). Results are summarized on Table 5
for aluminum and Table 6 for steel.
For 1050 aluminum, tests point out that the SAE30 oil yields the
best surface finish, with the AL-M also showing good results, with the
lowest value in Rt. Tests performed with Finarol B5746 presented high
roughness across the surface, including impairing the realization of
roughness tests. Fig. 7 shows the best (smoother) and worst (rougher)
finished surfaces obtained with aluminum sheets for different lubricants.
Table 6 shows the roughness values achieved after forming DP780
steel parts. Oppositely to AA1050, Finarol B5746 delivered the
smoothest roughness, with AS-40 grease giving very similar values. In
this case the SAE 30 is the lubricant that produces the worst level of
surface roughness. Both the smoother and rougher results can be
checked in Fig. 8.
According to the results, there is an apparent relation between the
lubricant viscosity and the formed material hardness in what concerns
the surface finish quality. For softer materials, a lubricant with high
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PRECISION ENGINEERING AND MANUFACTURING Vol. 16, No. 3
Fig. 9 Distribution of vertical and horizontal forces as a function of
forming depth (in percentage value) for AA1050
viscosity provides better results in the final surface. On an opposite
trend, for harder materials, such as DP780 steel, lubricants with lower
viscosity values provide best-finished products. In other words,
lubricants most appropriate for use in incremental forming of aluminum
won't produce good results when forming steel, and vice-versa. Solid
lubricants (like MoS2) didn’t bring significant advantages, once the
obtained surface finish is quite similar to the one achieved with low
viscosity mineral oil, a much cheaper product.
Finally, it is worthy mentioning the evolution of roughness
parameters from the initial sheet to the formed one. One again, very
distinct behaviors were found, since initial roughness in steel is higher
compared to formed parts for all lubricants including SAE30. For
aluminum, formed parts surface presents higher roughness parameters
compared to initial ones.
3.2 Forming forces
In any forming process, it is desirable to minimize the amount of
forces involved to produce a given part. To support the conclusions
related to lubricant effects, the effect on forming forces is studied in
this session. While the tool described the desired forming trajectory,
radial (horizontal) and compressive (vertical) forces were recorded for
AA1050 (represented in Fig. 9), and DP780 (Fig. 10).
Analysing Fig. 9, it can be seen that HSB and AL-M lubricants
yields similar vertical forces. The same behavior was observed for AS-
40, Finarol and SAE 30. Two levels of vertical (compressive) forces
were observed, circa 280N and 330N. The first level corresponds to the
tests with the HSB and AL-M lubricants, and the other for the
remaining lubricants. Regarding horizontal (radial) forces, the highest
value was approximately 170N and the lowest around 120N. It was
also noted that the application of Finarol B 5746 corresponded to the
highest forces in both directions and the worst finish. The curve trends
were quite similar, and generally lubricants giving larger vertical forces
are also those with higher horizontal forces. However, a direct relation
between forming forces suffered and final quality of the surfaces
cannot be deduced since the test with SAE 30 presented good surface
 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PRECISION ENGINEERING AND MANUFACTURING Vol. 16, No. 3 MARCH 2015 / 593

Fig. 11 Friction coefficient (ratio of horizontal/vertical forces) during

AA1050 cone forming
Fig. 10 Distribution of vertical and horizontal forces as a function of
forming depth (in percentage value) for DP 780 steel

finish but high force values (similar to the rougher case, the Finarol
lubricant). Distinguishing types of lubricants (oils and pastes) wasn’t
possible because the AS-40 grease featured compatible force values
compared to those measured when testing the mineral oils.
Fig. 10 depicts forces sustained by the tool when forming DP780
dual phase steel, and as would be expected, the forming force values
were much higher than for aluminum.
The trend of the force curves for steel and aluminum are quite alike,
differing only in magnitude. For the case of steel, the forming forces
for different lubricants show no relevant differences, specially vertical
forces tending to 1500 N and showing slower growth from 1100 N.
Horizontal forces grow more monotonically over time. Similarly to the
aluminum, it is difficult to identify any relation between the distribution
of forces, the type of lubricant used and surface quality achieved. Fig. 12 Friction coefficient (ratio of horizontal/vertical forces) during
Again, the lubricants with better results in terms of surface finish (AS- DP780 cone forming
40 and B5746 Finarol) show horizontal forces values situated on the
lower and higher force value bounds. Finally, as typical from SPIF
operations, vertical forces are approximately two times greater than the
horizontal ones for both materials.20
The following Figs. 11 and 12 illustrate the ratio between horizontal
and vertical forces throughout the forming process, which corresponds
to the classical sliding friction. Results generally show higher friction
at the first stages of the incremental forming. It is very interesting to
notice a much smoother behavior from AS-40 product showing a lower
range of friction values (and lower initial friction) for both metallic
sheets. The evolution of the values is completely distinct for aluminum
and steel, where the first shows higher friction at the first stages for
forming and a minimum at the end, whereas the second shows minimum
Fig. 13 Obtained vs. ideal geometry for aluminum and steel
values at 60% of forming depth.
incrementally formed truncated cones

3.3 Geometrical deviation

One of the major drawbacks of the incremental forming process is were followed for the toolpath (Fig. 4), - which would be normally
related to geometrical inaccuracy of formed parts. Contrary to classical advisable - in an attempt to measure only the effect of lubrication on
deep drawing process, springback takes places constantly during the the final part geometry. The measurement was carried out with a needle
incremental forming operation. In this work, no compensation strategies probe as shown in Fig. 6.
 594 / MARCH 2015
However, the results drawn on Fig. 13 show only 3 different curves:
The ideal geometry (continuous line), and one to aluminum and steel
truncated cones. In fact, no relevant differences were found in terms of
final geometry concerning the different lubricants used. This is in
accordance with force measurements, once the variations found are
probably not enough to induce a different amount of springback
phenomenon. It is also important to notice that no backing plate was
used during the forming operation, which caused severe springback due
to the smoother radius at the first 5 mm of forming depth. Even so,
springback is more pronounced for the dual phase steel part.
4. Conclusions
This study allowed establishing some conclusions about the used
lubricant relevance during the single point incremental forming process.
Indeed, under a same given set of forming parameters, it indeed
influences the final surface quality of the parts obtained. Even if the
machine, the toolpath strategy and the geometry to obtain are the most
influencing parameters, the use of a suitable lubricant may significantly
improve the surface finish quality, reduce forming forces and prevent
tool wear.
From the results obtained, some conclusions are straightforward.
SAE 30 oil and AL-M grease provided better results for AA1050 sheet
parts, while Finarol B5746 oil and AS-40 grease distinguished
themselves in forming DP780 steel. The AS-40 also proved to have the
lower range of friction values during forming operation. According to
the results obtained, it was possible to find a clear relation between the
hardness of the material to form and the viscosity of the lubricant used
on the final roughness. The greater the hardness of the material to form,
the lower the necessary viscosity. Concerning greases, it can be
concluded that they generally provide a good finish, even though in this
case they haven't particularly stood out when compared with the oils
used.
Additionally, there seems to be a relation between the necessary
forming forces and the surface finish quality. As expected, the forces
required to process DP780 are significantly higher, and generally result
in a better finish, when compared to aluminum parts. There is a clear
relation between the level of compressive forming forces, the hardness
of the material and the surface finish itself, for a given set of incremental
forming parameters used. As expected, springback phenomena is
significant for incrementally formed parts and lubricants play no role to
reduce it.
Analyzing the values of the resulting radial and compressive forces
for each lubricant and for each material studied, it can't be established
any direct relation of interest, once similar finishes implied different
resultant forces. Naturally, the lubricant requiring less forming forces
and leading to lower friction values would be the most indicated to
perform SPIF.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The authors acknowledge the valuable cooperation from Professor
Augusto Lopes, Inês Matos and Carlos Lauro to conduct the experiments.
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PRECISION ENGINEERING AND MANUFACTURING Vol. 16, No. 3
Portuguese Science Foundation and Compete Program under grant
EXPL/EMS-TEC/0539/2013 as well as Brazilian grant CAPES grant n
051510-8 are gratefully acknowledged.
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