Low precision is one of the noticeable defects which would lead to different serious problems in sheet metal incremental forming process (SIF). On account of bearing biaxial tensile stresses basically in the contacting area between tool and sheet, the major deformation zone, it can be thought there is no springback in this region. Therefore the precision problem is thought to be derived from the geometrical distortion, because of the stiffness lack of forming tool in the present work. In order to study the springback which would lead to the lack of precision in the forming process, symmetric-cone-like parts were designed and formed together with the FEM simulation were run at the same time. Analyzed and compared to both results between experiments and simulation, it was found that there is so few amount of spingback, which no need to be considered on the influence of precision, taken place during the forming process. Moreover, the precision was decreased significantly when the forming angle was enhanced and the relationship between the precision and forming angle emerged into linear ones. So the precision was proposed to be enhanced via additional compensation of forming for the exact samples. Furthermore, compensation experiments, different symmetric-cone-like parts, were designed and operated and the results shown that the forming precision can be terrific improved by controlled with the error compensation. © 2019 The Authors