Rather than starting with a block of material, much of which will be machined away, sheet metal lets you buy what you need and use what you need. The remainder of a metal sheet is still usable, while swarf—the shavings removed in machining—must be recycled.
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As with many modern fabrication techniques, sheet metal manufacturing can be automated and parts produced directly from CAD models. The technology uses a variety of materials and a range of processes for shaping finished components and products. Perhaps most important, in a world of mass production, sheet metal fabrication is highly scalable. While setup for the first piece can be costly, the price per piece drops quickly as the volume increases. This is, of course, true of many processes, but cost-per-piece for sheet metal generally drops more steeply than for a subtractive process like machining.
Sheet metal is cut, stamped, punched, sheared, formed, bent, welded, rolled, riveted, drilled, tapped, and machined. Hardware can be inserted into sheet metal components. The components can be brushed, plated, anodized, powder coated, spray painted, silk screened, or otherwise marked. And, of course, parts can be riveted, screwed, or welded into complex assemblies.
Like most other technologies today, sheet metal fabrication is evolving. Materials, equipment, and tooling have become more specialized than ever before. To take full advantage of sheet metal, it is critical that you leverage the correct supplier and method of manufacturing for your parts and their application. Along these lines, this white paper explores key components of sheet metal fabrication:
Sheet metal, by definition, starts out flat but can be shaped in many different ways to meet many different requirements. While this paper focuses on the technologies that shape sheet metal by bending it along a single axis, a variety of techniques exist for shaping the material into multi-axis forms that are not made up of flat planes or bent along a single axis. These include hot and cold forming techniques of deep drawing, hydroforming, spinning, and stamping. These are the kind of processes that create the body panels for modern vehicles, complex formed objects like metal sinks, and aluminum beverage cans. In many cases these techniques are iterative, shaping the metal by repeating the process several times to change the shape of the metal in increments.
Cold-forming processes addressed here are:
Cutting
Bending. Most metals can be bent along a straight axis using a variety of presses. The shapes of bends can range from gentle curves, like those along the vertical axis of a steel can, to sharp corners at angles above, below, or right at 90 degrees. Press brakes are used to create these relatively sharp bends. Rolling and forming methods produce open or closed single-axis curves in a continuous bending operation.
At Tempco Manufacturing, we field plenty of questions about our custom metal stamping and sheet metal fabrication processes. Below are answers to some of the queries we hear most often. Read on to find detailed responses to your metal stamping and fabrication questions. If you don’t see the answer you need, feel free to contact us. We’re happy to help!
Metal stamping can refer to any of a number of metal forming operations—in addition to stamping, bending, pressing, folding, and stretching actions may be used to produce the final part. All metal stamping processes utilize punch presses with custom-made tooling and dies to produce a shape, pattern, or other characteristic a part requires. In general, the stamping process can provide tighter tolerances than metal fabrication. It is a fast and cost-effective way to produce metal parts in large quantities.
Metal fabrication entails the manufacturing of three-dimensional metal parts via cutting, bending, and/or other assembly processes. Fabrication generally requires more specialized equipment, such as CNC laser cutters, CNC press brakes, CNC turret presses, and welding. Metal fabrication is often the more economical way to produce parts in lower quantities, as the tooling associated with stamping can be costly. Fabrication also provides greater design flexibility than stamping, as there is no tooling to change should your part design require alteration.
Tempco offers engineering and prototyping services to help you turn your stamped metal part designs into reality. Our expert engineers can help you optimize your part for the best fit, form, and function, and to make the stamping process faster, easier, and less expensive. Our prototype manufacturing service allows our customers to test-run their parts to ensure that their designs deliver the performance they require. Benefits of prototyping include:
Tempco works with a variety of material in our metal manufacturing processes. Every metal behaves differently in the stamping process, but our experience and expertise enables us to produce all types of metal parts with the same high levels of quality and precision. We can manufacture your metal parts from:
For custom metal stampings, two of the biggest factors that affect price are material type and the tolerances of the part design.
More common or readily available materials are less costly than specialty materials or alloys. To reduce metal cost, consider using an alternative material that provides performance similar to your original material choice. Similarly, materials in “standard” thicknesses cost less than “non-standard” thicknesses. If your parts can be produced from standard thickness materials without significantly altering their fit, form, or function, it is worthwhile to consider this cost-saving option, as well.
Contact us to discuss your requirements of sheet metal forming process. Our experienced sales team can help you identify the options that best suit your needs.
Tight-tolerance designs (those requiring tolerances of ± 0.005” or less) generally require more machining operations to hold those tolerances. Tight tolerance parts also often require secondary services , which increases costs, as well. It may be possible to revise your design to reduce certain tolerance requirements or to reduce the need for secondary processing.
The choice between stamping or machining usually comes down to the manufacturability of the part, as well as the quantities required. See “What is the difference between metal stamping and metal fabrication?” (above) for more detailed information on each process.
The metal stamping process generates less material scrap than machining. This helps keep costs down and can be especially important when working with more expensive specialty materials like titanium or tungsten. There are multiple types of stamping operations, including punching, blanking, embossing, flanging, and coining. In general, metal stampings are far lower in price-per-piece than machined parts, even when secondary services are required to meet tolerances.
Metal fabrication is generally used to produce more complex parts that require multiple operations to complete. Whereas metal stamping is often used to create a simple flat (or 2D) part, fabrication is often a better choice for producing 3D parts.
A “progressive die” is a series of punch press tools that have been specially designed to perform all the punching, cutting, coining, and bending required to produce a metal part through a multi-step process. In progressive die stamping, a strip of metal is fed through all stations of the progressive stamping die; each station performs one or more operations until the part is completed.
If you require complex, three-dimensional parts in quantities greater than 15,000 per year, progressive die stamping is an excellent manufacturing solution. Progressive die stamping is fast and efficient, and, for larger quantities, is one of the most cost-effective manufacturing processes available.
At Tempco, we manufacture all of our own tooling, dies, and fixtures. Our state-of-the-art tool and die shop enables us create high precision tooling and dies for even the most complex metal stamping and fabricating projects. We also store, maintain, and replace non-permanent dies at no cost to our customers.
In general, the lead time for tool and die manufacturing depends on the complexity of the punch design, the number of total operations needed to produce your part (for progressive stamping), and the quantity of parts required. Single stage tooling usually takes roughly 4 to 6 weeks to produce; progressive tooling usually takes 8 to 10 weeks.
With U.S.-based manufacturing, you can count on better quality parts and components, reliable two-way communication, and on-time delivery. American manufacturers are the best in the world, producing the highest quality, tightest tolerance parts. Domestic manufacturing allows for faster turnaround times and more dependable deliveries. For top quality parts delivered on your schedule, there’s no substitute for American manufacturing.
Benefits of domestic manufacturing include:
Deep drawing is a metal manufacturing technique that forms flat sheet metal into three-dimensional shapes. The process is called "deep drawing" because it is used to form parts that are deeper than they are wide, based on the depth-to-diameter ratio of the finished piece.
Deep drawing is used to create various shapes, including cylinders, spheres, and rectangles. These shapes can then be utilized to create a wide range of products like automotive parts, medical device components, cookware, and more.
Many different metal materials can be deep drawn, but not all. Metals must meet specific tensile strength, yield strength, and elongation characteristics in order to be deep drawn. At Tempco, we manufacture deep-drawn parts from stainless steel, aluminum, nickel, titanium, and more, along with specialty alloys like Inconel and Hastelloy.
Deep-drawn parts offer a range of benefits for manufacturing metal components, including:
If you want to learn more, please visit our website applications of custom sheet metal enclosures.