Conference Proceedings - Innovations for the sheet metal industry 281 05 SPECIFIC PROCESS           * Corresponding author: postal address, phone, fax, email address                   1,3 Department of Metallurgical Engineering and Material Sciences 2 Department of Mechanical Engineering Indian Institute of Technology Bombay  Single point incremental forming (SPIF) has gained considerable importance and attention in the sheet metal forming sector, particularly because of the enhanced forming limits achieved and its cost effective rapid prototyping capabilities. But certain intrinsic aspects like poor sur face quality, dimensional inaccuracies and moreover the prohibitively high production times required, has prevented its large scale industrial application. High feed rates are possible but at the expense of surface quality, dimensional accuracy and formability. The present study inves tigates the effect of various process parameters (namely step size, tool diameter, feed rate, ans tool material) on surface quality and dimensional accuracy. Experiments are performed on drawing quality (DQ) steel sheets to make truncated cones. Design of experiments (DOE) based on the Taguchi method is used to optimize the process parameters keeping minimum dimensional errors and minimum roughness as the objective functions. ANOVA is performed to obtain the percentage effect of these parameters on the objective functions. The study re veals the effectiveness of DOE using Taguchi method in the optimization of the SPIF process, which allows finding the best machine and process setting with minimum number of experi ments.  Single point incremental forming, Taguchi method, ANOVA.   Single point incremental forming has gained con siderable importance in the metal forming sector due to enhanced forming limits and rapid prototyp ing capabilities. The process has the advantage of enhanced forming limits due to extremely localised plastic deformation. The history, advance and the detailed process mechanics of this technology are described in [1, 2, 3]. These references are com prehensive enough and the detailed process de scription is avoided in this paper for this reason. Due to the continuous contact with the forming tool, friction plays a key role not only in the de formation mechanics but also on the surface quality of the formed components [4]. The process is prone to various undesired surface and structural conse quences if the key process parameters like the step size (z), feedrate (f), tool diameter (d t ) and tool material are not judiciously chosen. Effect of z and spindle speeds on the surface roughness was studied by Hagan et al.[5]. Effect of coated and uncoated tools on the same was studied by Cavalier et al. [6]. Studies by Ham et al. [7] show that the step size and tool radius affects the internal surface roughness largely. The geometric inaccuracies of the process and methods to quantify and reduce these errors are discussed in [8, 9]. A parametric study on the dimensional errors was done by Ham et al. [10] using a BoxBehnken design of experi ments. The present study aims at minimising the dimensional errors and roughness, which could help the process to evolve as a more industrially suitable process by the combined use of Taguchi method and Analysis of variance (ANOVA). This method helps to make the process robust to inher ent noise factors like initial thickness and rough ness of the blank [11]. Dimensional accuracy of the formed components was checked using a coordi nate measuring machine (CMM). Roughness measurements were done using White light inter ferometer as it is a noncontact type technique.