Laser cut stainless steel bracket
Whenever possible we will CNC punch out the sheet metal components that we need to satisfy our customer’s sheet metal requirements. However there are occasions when perhaps a component is just too thick to CNC punch out successfully and a laser cut profile is more efficiently produced. For us this point is reached at thicknesses of 3mm in stainless steel, 4mm mild steel and 5mm in aluminium alloys. There is another application that sometimes favours using a CNC laser cutter over a CNC punch press and that’s a sheet metal component which has very complex cut-outs or an outer edge profile that cannot easily be CNC punched with standard tooling. This little stainless steel bracket doesn’t fall into either of these categories but we did opt to have it laser cut. The main reason being that the bracket was in stainless steel and the slots did not coincide with any standard tooling we held for our Trumpf CNC punch presses. As the order was only for a small quantity it was easier and cheaper to have them laser cut rather than organise special tooling. If the quantities increase in the future then the CNC punching route will be the way to go with this little stainless steel bracket.
Again, this just shows the range of internal services and network of sub-contracts operations that V&F Sheet Metal can bring together to support you when you need sheet metal manufacturing in whatever form or volumes that it might take.
Laser cut stainless steel bracket