Considerations on the Selection of Materials for Prosthetic Parts Obtained by Incremental Forming

Incremental forming is a novel but promising procedure for the flexible manufacturing of parts starting from metal sheets. It could be very useful in the medical area and especially in orthopedic prosthetics, where each part needs to be very precisely made, but at the same time has to have a unique shape. In this context, the selection of the material that could best satisfy the manufacturing and usage requirements is very important. The current paper suggests a unified parameter that could be used for assessing the suitability of a specific material for the manufacturing, by incremental forming, of prosthetic parts that would be used in human surgery