Custom Metal Manufacturing

The industrial landscape of the United States has a handful of crucial features, and metal fabrication shops are definitely one of them. These shops create equipment, structures, and various metal parts that support many other industries, from warehousing and manufacturing to food service and retail establishments.

In some circumstances, standard issue or off-the-shelf metal components are just what clients need. On the other hand, other situations might mean that conventional parts don't work out for certain applications. In order to give clients the materials they require, most metal fabrication businesses provide custom design services followed by similar engineering and manufacturing work.

For projects big and small, many expert metal machinists use a number of different manufacturing processes in order to cut, bend, transform, and shape sheet metal into parts that are not only usable but useful.

Bending and Forming

Metal fabricators use things like specially crafted dies, custom stamping machines, and press brakes to make metal components through specialised processes like the following:

Bending, which can include customised services like elastomer or rotary bending:

1. Bottoming
2. Coining
3. Cutting and joining
4. Drawing and deep drawing
5. Folding
6. Press and roll forming
7. Punching
8. Stamping

For sheet metal to be used, it typically has to be cut. Many cuts are just simple trims, whereas others require a precision process which creates distinct components from sheets or coils of raw material. Such cut parts can get finished alone or connected with other parts using a joining process.

Metal fabricators use a number of processes, including:

1. Brazing
2. Joining
3. Laser cutting
4. Riveting
5. Sawing
6. Shearing
7. Water jet cutting
8. Welding, including TIG and MIG

Once any metal sheet is crafted into a particular component, it can get deburred, polished, or custom finished with silk screening, powder coatings, paint, and other distinct surface treatments.

Material Selection

Even before there is a decision about what the manufacturing process is necessary for a custom project, the crucial first step of any project is the choice of material. A carefully considered material choice can optimise the efficient production, performance, and total cost of any particular piece of customised metalwork. Also, it helps to narrow down search parameters regarding who is the best option as a sheet metal fabrication company.

Sheet metal materials offer very different properties, including:

Flexibility

Particularly for forming and bending processes, a metal's rigidity and tensile strength play crucial roles in the manufacturing.

Resistance

Chemical, water, and weather resistance can vary drastically even in just one material family. Will the material you use need a speciality finish? Or can it perform well on its own?

Strength

You might think stronger materials are better, but they can also bring machining setbacks like brittleness into the equation. Added strength is something that can be added to what might be weaker materials through processes like heat treatment.

Surface Quality

A number of materials are naturally strong, attractive, or smoothly processed, whereas others are more amenable to accepting custom finishes or joining.

Weight

Even various alloys of an identical material, like steel, might bring drastically different ratios in terms of weight to performance.

Many speciality manufacturers offer a wide variety of processing services in order to accommodate the unique material choice you make, along with their very own unique results, finishing options, and process qualities. Specialty stamping, deep drawing, and precision water jet cutting might be among the many custom services a project requires.

It's common for manufacturers to provide an impressive variety of equipment that gets used with substantial experience and the power to custom order many different metals, if they don't already have them in stock. They typically employ the process experts and materials custom projects need and have consultants available when needed.