Titanium based cranial reconstruction using incremental sheet forming

In this paper, we report recent work in cranial plate manufacturing using incremental sheet forming (ISF) process. With a typical cranial shape, the ISF process was used to manufacture the titanium cranial shape by using different ISF tooling solutions with and without backing plates. Detailed evaluation of the ISF process including material deformation and thinning, geometric accuracy and surface finish was conducted by using a combination of experimental testing and Finite Element (FE) simulation. The results show that satisfactory cranial shape can be achieved with sufficient accuracy and surface finish by using a feature based tool path generation method and new ISF tooling design. The results also demonstrate that the ISF based cranial reconstruction has the potential to achieve considerable lead time reduction as compared to conventional methods for cranial plate manufacturing. This outcome indicates that there is a potential for the ISF process to achieve technological advances and economic benefits as well as improvement to quality of life.