ABSTRACT
Incremental sheet forming (ISF) has the capacity to produce sheet material components at lower cost due to the flexibility and elimination of costly dies. In order to find out the origin of the ISF process and first true ISF patent, a timeline of historical developments discussed in this chapter. Depending on technological developments, the history of the ISF process can be divided into four eras as follow: First era (until 1989), Second era or era of Japanese developments (1990 to 2000), Third era (2001 to 2010) and Modern era (2010 onwards). It is clear that this was the period (1993 to 2000) of process variations as many variations were experimented with in the true ISF process. In 2001, a patent was filed by Luttgeharm under the name “Numerically controlled forming method” and the same was issued in 2003. In 2006, another patent request was filed by Callebaut and co-workers under the same name claiming some extended aspects.
