Executive Summary : | Indian medical market is valued at $11 billion in 2020 expected to $50 billion by 2025. The country on the other hand is solely relying on imports of medical devices, implants and prosthetics and therefore, are either out of reach or are available at very high cost for intended end user. The country as supporting “Make in India” initiative to reduce the dependance on imports, efforts are required to establish the indigenous production of the medical implants. Design of the bio medical products are complex and need high level customization. Single Point Incremental Sheet Forming (SPIF) is one such effective, flexible and rapid prototyping solution which can facilitate the development and production of biomedical implants. SPIF offers a much-needed departure by allowing forming of components without using dies. However, the process is marred with process constraints like low geometrical accuracy non-uniform thickness distribution in formed parts. DSIF is an advanced variant of SPIF which utilizes two tools, one to form and other to provide support on the other side of the sheet. Recently, the process has gained the attention of researchers across the globe. Nevertheless, as the production of highly efficient bio-implants are concerned, the process has two major limitations. Forming of biocompatible materials like titanium, at room temperature is challenging and causes premature failures in the formed parts. Second, being the incompetence to produce geometrically efficient parts as the lower/supporting tool tends to lose contact with the bottom surface of the tool. The proposal offers the development of DSIF process combined with the Electric Assisted ISF (EAISF) as a hybrid solution. The processes in combination will facilitate the forming of hard-to-form biocompatible material. To address the second issue, DSIF process is further proposed to be incorporating the novel mechanism to enable the real time motion compensation of the lower tool so that the perpetual contact between the sheet and the supporting tool be maintained. The project, in its scope, incorporates the development of forming and tool path strategy for EAHDSIF process and its setup. In addition, a novel strategy to enable real time motion control of the supporting tool so that during the process, continuous contact would be maintained between the supporting tool and the sheet would be developed. CAD, CAM and CAE strategies will be established to process patient’s specific data, pre-fabrication simulation and production of implants respectively. Optimization of the process would be executed to identify the optimum values of the technological parameters (i.e., scallop height, thinning compensation, squeezing factor, tool path strategy, tool geometry, and friction and temperature conditions). Intended aim is to develop a hybrid tool setup for implementing the proposed strategies to develop high quality medical implants of titanium alloy. |