Recently, the engraving of letters or a pattern on a product surface has received more attention especially in trying to satisfy the customer requirements. Half-piecing is a protrusion forming process that pierces only 40~50% of the material thickness. In the current study, the half-piercing technique for making clear letters by protruding sheet material was selected and studied. The influence of clearance and penetration depth was investigated by measuring the camber and extruded length of a protrusion after experiments. In addition, a numerical analysis was performed for the same working conditions and compared with experimental results. It is shown that, as the clearance increases, the camber of a protrusion increases rapidly and the extruded length decreases slightly. The deformation pattern around the cutting edge during half-piercing changes from an extrusion mode to a shearing mode as the clearance changes from minus to plus values. It is also confirmed that the experimental results show a good agreement with the numerical analyses.