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What To Know About Sheet Metal Fabrication

This helpful guide on what to know about sheet metal fabrication will help you determine whether this process is best suited to your unique application.

What To Know About Sheet Metal Fabrication

If you’re considering sheet metal fabrication as the manufacturing method for your product, it’s essential to have a comprehensive understanding of the process, its advantages, and its potential drawbacks. In doing so, you can avoid any unpleasant surprises and ensure that you make the most advantageous decision. To make your decision process as easy as possible, we have composed this helpful guide on what to know about sheet metal fabrication. If you have a specific way of how you want your metal manufactured such as having the metal treated with heat, you may want to look into ‘heat treating companies near me‘ for you to have it passed onto so it can be dealt with the way you require it.

What Is Sheet Metal Fabrication?

Sheet metal fabrication is a manufacturing process that involves transforming flat sheets of metal into objects, parts, or structures. In order to do so, methods such as punching, cutting, folding, and assembling are typically implemented.

Common Applications of Sheet Metal Fabrication

Due to the durability of the products produced through sheet metal fabrication, this manufacturing method is highly popular in a wide range of industrial fields. For example, sheet metal fabrication is often implemented in the construction, automotive, and manufacturing industries.

Benefits of Sheet Metal Fabrication

Durability

As previously mentioned, the sheet metal fabrication process typically produces highly durable and robust parts. As such, sheet metal is an ideal option for applications that require high-strength parts, devices, or structures.

High Degree of Heat Resistance

In addition to creating exceptionally strong parts, sheet metal fabrication also produces parts that have a high degree of heat resistance. Thus, the parts produced using this process can often withstand even the harshest environmental conditions.

Expense

Another important thing to know about sheet metal fabrication is that it generally has a relatively low cost. In addition to a comparatively low production cost, sheet metal can often be easily repaired, which further attests to its potential financial savings.

Potential Downsides of Sheet Metal Fabrication 

Potential Secondary Costs

While it is true that sheet metal fabrication can have relatively low production costs, this is not always the case. If you want to create more intricate or sophisticated parts, extensive secondary processes are typically needed. Ultimately, these secondary processes can significantly increase the unit price of sheet metal fabrication.

Appearance

Another potential drawback of sheet metal fabrication is the appearance of the parts that the process produces. While sheet metal fabrication is a great option for producing products that have a simpler or boxier appearance, highly complex or sophisticated designs aren’t its strong suit. If you need to produce more visually appealing parts, consider a process such as reaction injection molding instead.

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Last modified: June 10, 2021