Sheet metal processing is to process thin metal sheets (usually below 6mm) through specific machines to form customized sheet metal parts. It is a comprehensive cold-working process for subtractive forming. According to different cutting tools, sheet metal processing technology is generally divided into five different processing methods: sheet metal blanking, sheet metal cutting, sheet metal stamping, sheet metal bending, and sheet metal welding. Our sheet metal fabrication services can machine any sheet metal hardware for you.
Mold processing: Using fixed vowin.cn/' target='_blank'>molds to produce sheet metal parts, this processing method is relatively low in cost and suitable for mass production of parts. However, mold development is required in the early stage, the processing cycle is long, and the mold cost is high.
Non-mold processing: uses laser cutting, bending machine, shearing machine, CNC punching riveting machine, and other equipment to process metal sheet metal, non-mold processing has the characteristics of a short processing cycle, generally used for sample production or small batch sheet metal processing metal parts Production.
Vowin sheet metal fabrication services have been around for many years. We have our sheet metal fab. Our employees have rich experience in sheet metal processing. Unlike traditional sheet metal shops, we can provide everything from prototyping to finishing, whether you need a single or multiple sheet metal parts.
The material utilization rate of sheet metal processing is very high, which can significantly reduce the material cost of sheet metal workpieces. Sheet metal parts formed by sheet metal processing have the characteristics of high strength and lightweight. Like the 3D printing process, sheet metal processing parts are widely used in communications, the automotive industry, medical equipment, and other fields.
There are a variety of materials that can be used in sheet metal processing, each with their own unique properties and benefits. Here are some of the materials we recommend for sheet metal processing:
Stainless Steel: Stainless steel is a popular choice for sheet metal processing due to its corrosion resistance, strength, and durability. It is often used in applications where hygiene and cleanliness are important, such as in the food and medical industries.
Aluminum: Aluminum is lightweight, strong, and highly resistant to corrosion, making it an ideal material for a wide range of sheet metal applications. It is commonly used in the aerospace and automotive industries, as well as for architectural and decorative purposes.
Copper: Copper is a highly conductive metal with excellent corrosion resistance. It is often used in electrical and electronic applications, as well as for decorative purposes.
Brass: Brass is an alloy of copper and zinc, and is known for its corrosion resistance and attractive appearance. It is often used in architectural and decorative applications, as well as for musical instruments.
Galvanized Steel: Galvanized steel is coated with a layer of zinc to protect it from corrosion. It is commonly used in outdoor applications, such as for roofing and fencing.
At our company, we have extensive experience working with these and other materials in sheet metal processing. Our team can help you select the best material for your project based on your specific needs and requirements.
Normally, there are a lot of kinds of technology used on sheet metal processing parts: welding, cutting, bending, punching, forming, rolling, joining, and more. But do not worry, Ruitai will make your custom sheet metal processing parts according to your CAD files and 2D files. We will choose the right and economical way for your sheet metal processing parts.
Ruitai can make different kinds of surface treatments on your sheet metal processing orders. It includes passivation, zinc plated, powder coated, painting, nickel plated, color plating, copper plated, black coated, etc.
If you have more questions about sheet metal processing surface treatment, just let us know.
Usually, you can find two shapes of sheet metals available. One is a flat sheet that is the rectangular shape of a metal sheet that is flat and uniformly thicken. Whereas another shape is coiled sheet metal. A flat sheet is typical, while the coiled sheet metal is formed through roller slitters.
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| Flat sheet metal | Coiled sheet metal |
It is really hard to find out any industry that is not consuming sheet metal. A significant example is the automobile industry that needs sheet metal for car frame formation. Also, trucks, buses, aeroplane bodies are manufactured using these sheet metals.
Another big example that you can find is the body of various computers, laptops, printers, photocopiers, cellular phones, all made of sheet metal. The electrical industry is also dependent on sheet metals. For example, transformers body, main switch bodies, connections, terminals, carriers, etc., are made of sheet metals.
The food industry also uses sheet metal to form food container tins. You can also notice many products like furniture, fences, signs, lamps, vessels all made of sheet metal.
5. Why Do You Achieve Edge Rounding of Metals in Sheet Metal Processing?
You reduce the sharpness of the edge with edge rounding. This is important to make sheet metals useful and reliable to make them safe for industrial and other usages in homes. The food and chemical sector also requires edge rounding for lacquering and coating their products.
You can define metal forming as a type of manufacturing technique that has significant importance in all metal processing techniques. In this manufacturing process, you maintain the cohesion that is the attraction among material particles. Plastic deformation is usually used to update the outlook of your workpiece in this process.
During the plastic deforming process, you exert extreme external forces to change the location of the atoms at sliding planes. This results in the modifications of physical and technological properties, which you will call “hardening.”
In general, this process is competitively easy at a specific temperature which you call forming temperature. At that temperature, the resistance to deformation of metals is reduced by many folds. At this temperature, you will notice immediate recrystallization of the microstructure of the metal hence avoiding hardening. Thus, plastic forming of steel at forming temperature needs much less work and effort as compared to room temperature.
As you can comprehend by the name, cold forming requires less temperature, whereas hot forming is done at high temperatures. Both have their own advantages and disadvantages.
In hot forming, you apply specific techniques under high temperatures to achieve better formability. You might experience poor dimensional tolerances as well as scored surfaces in the hot forming process, which are probably its major disadvantages.
Whereas you can get precise dimensional tolerances through the cold-forming process. You do not have to heat the material, which results in increased strength. But this cold-formed workpiece could only be welded if you soft annealed, thus minimizing stress.
Some of the most common ones are as follows,
Smoothing out the edges of sheet metals is termed curling. When you produce sheet metal, they often contain sharp edges with a burr, initially. The main purpose of curling to turn the sharp or rough edges into smooth metal sheets.
To get the required thickness, you can iron the sheet uniformly. For example, ironed aluminum is the basic element in the manufacturing process of aluminum cans.
Mostly you find aluminum sheet metal thicker enough initially that they are not suitable to transform into food cans. So you need to iron them to get the desired composition. This process uses two dies and punching the sheet among those to achieve the desired result.
Other important methods also include bending, in which sheet metals are converted into specific shapes using stress or punch.
9. What Are Major Separation Processes in Sheet Metal Processing?
The two major and most significant separation processes in Sheet Metal Processing are cutting and punching. These procedures allow you to manufacture products with great precision and accuracy.
Fort cutting you apply shearing force, therefore sometimes called as shearing processes too. If you apply great enough shearing force to exceed the inner shear stress in the material it results in the collapse of the material, and it gets separated at the cutting location.
You can apply this with two tools. These tools can also be called upper and lower blades as one is applied above the sheet and the other below the sheet. The lower tool is used for placing the sheet metal, while the upper tool is used to produce the blow pressure downwards.
Sheet thickness, specific shearing process, and the material itself determine the size of clearance. As sheering goes on, you can notice its effect on the cutting edge of the material. It can deform plastically and “roll over” the edge.
When the blades penetrate into the metal further vertical burnished zone of material appears. Stress gets higher and higher, and finally, material fractures at an angle. You can see some blur, too, at the cutting edges.
Another significant separation process is sheet metal punching, in which the substance or the material is removed from a metal’s piece by applying a great force. You can even use CNC Punching to produce desired shapes and sizes by making holes or cutouts in the product.
Punches are of simple geometrical shapes, e.g., circle, square, rectangle, or combinations of these shapes. The punch then presses downward at high speed through the sheet towards the die below. The cut slug is punched out of the sheet falls down through the opening in the die. You can execute punching manually using punch press, or advanced computer numerical controllers can be employed.
Different processes and techniques that you use to enhance surface properties are termed surface technologies. You can supplement the primary function of sheet metals through surface treatment.
You coat the surface with paint or warmish-type materials. You can remove a layer of the surface through burnishing or electropolishing. Other several mechanical and chemical surface treatments are also available that you can choose according to your need.
The surface treatment enhances these features of sheet metal products.
· Aesthetics
Mostly surface treatments allow the sheet metal products to become more attractive. For the car sector, home appliance and medical purpose metal treatments have become mandatory to make products more appealing and successful to market.
You can delay the metal oxidation process using Surface treatment techniques. That, in turn, will hinder rust, so the duration will be prolonged.
Surface treatment helps you to increase the surface hardness of single sheet metal products. They become more resistant to mechanical stress.
Many processes are used for surface treatment in sheet metal processing. The most significant of those are described here. These processes are applied to iron, copper, aluminum, stainless steel. It is also useful for alloys. They not only improve the resistance of metal sheets but also helps to attain better finishing quality.
You can coat acrylic or epoxy resin type of paint to increase the resistance towards corrosion by coating—this technique is mostly used by automotive field and household objects like furniture, etc.
You can coast the sheet metal products using a layer of some other metal or alloy. Mostly zinc, nickel, silver, or chrome layer is deposited using electroplating techniques. This process will preserve the products from any external agents.
During Burnishing, you rub a smooth, hard tool with sufficient pressure on the metal surface. This causes the plastic flow of the metal, which flattens the high surface spots. It is done with a live flame to improve the appearance of the steel.
You can obtain polished products by grinding them with an abrasive paste. This process will make an impressive and smooth final effect.
With the help of a jet of sand and air, you remove the corroded and damaged parts from a metal object.
In this process, you form a thin protective layer of oxide to aluminum, zinc, and magnesium sheet metals.
These both are shearing processes and utilize the punch and die to produce required parts from steel metal.
In the blanking process, the metal sheet piece is placed between punch and die. The blanking cutout part, which is cut in a die’s shape, is the required part, whereas the leftover sheet metal piece is the scrap.
In contrast, piercing is a type of punching operation that produces an extruded hole in the workpiece. It can further be explained as the punched-out part is just scrap and the desired product is the sheet metal.
Laser cutting is an advanced cutting technology. It is a thermal process in which cutting is done by directing a high-power laser beam that melts the material in that specific area on the metal sheet.
One of the basic processes in metal fabrication is cutting. Laser cutting is just the go-to technology to perform those cutting jobs because of its being so advanced. Since laser cutting does not apply any force, the threat of metal deformation flies away. Furthermore, it is fast, highly précised, and allows narrow cutting slots, fatly. Because of such advantages, most of the manufacturers in China prefer laser cutting over other traditional methods. China produces WSX laser along with Raycus laser to offer the most economical cuttings.
Although the advantages of laser cutting are countless. You can describe the Major advantages as under:
You will find Laser cutting a lot quicker than the traditional mechanical cutting method. During more complex cuts, this fastness is more noticeable.
You will find a really small burr in laser cutting. This will be small enough to remove. But this quantity of burr is dependent on the material type and other factors like sheet metal thickness.
Laser cutting is supposed to be highly precise since laser cutting is highly accurate as compared to other thermal cutting techniques. You won’t need any added tolerances since the accuracy meets its highest standard, being +/-0.1 mm without any after treatment.
You will find the same setup of laser cutting suitable for the same material thickness. Even the intricate cuts are managed easily. You will not require any exchange of the tools as long as the sheet metal does not changes its width, length or thickness.
Most laser cutting machines come with feeding systems, so they offer high precision. They need only a little manpower to be highly automated. Labor hiring cost cuts down by many folds. High speed is another big advantage, so more work is done in the given time with a smaller number of laborers.
As you know, everything on earth offers a little bit of disadvantages, no matter how useful it is. The same is the case with laser cutting. Here are the major disadvantages that you may find with laser cutting.
Laser-cutting machines are expensive. You can find their prices as high as £1,000,000. That is almost double as compare to waterjet or plasma cuttings.
You will find laser cutting not suitable with the high thickness of the sheet. Mostly the laser cutters are suitable for maximum thickness being up to 15 or 20 mm. Anyhow the available machinery, along with the expertise to use it, are the main deciding factors of the highest suitable thickness.
One of the disadvantages of laser cutting is, it melts the material for fine cutting. This melting metal produces several types of gases and dangerous fumes. So advance ventilation is highly required to make the working environment safe.
So here you read the ultimate guide for sheet metal processing. Hope all of your queries are resolved to know. You would have become a good knowledgeable person in this field. You are now familiar with nearly all major sheet metal processes. It is easy for you now to choose the best suitable process among all processes according to the product you are going to make.
For further understanding, this video is supposed to be helpful for you.
