Blog - Page 17 of 17 -

Sheet metal work with countersink formed holes

Wednesday, June 15th, 2011

Counter sink form CNC Punched in Aluminium sheet

Sheet metal fabrications often need to have countersunk holes ready to take countersunk screws when being screwed together. These countersinks have always been drilled in with standard pillar drills or counter bits. There is another production method that can be employed, which is to form the countersink shape in a CNC punch press or fly press. There are some good advantages to having formed countersinks in a sheet metal component:

1. The counter sink form will be even in cross section, no more triangular counter sinks!

2. The edge of the countersink will be softer than drilling the countersink in the sheet metal.

3. The formed countersink can be hit in the sheet metal at the same rate as a CNC punched hole which is clearly far quicker than drilling the countersink. This can lead to a big cost saving when there are many countersinks for each part.

CNC punched Sheet Aluminium panels

The only down side to CNC punching in the countersink form is that some harder materials like stainless steel are not suitable with standard CNC tooling but mild steel and aluminium alloys are perfect.

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Sheet metal software – Radan 2011 R2 – new release

Thursday, June 9th, 2011

: Sheet metal development with Radan 2011 – R2

We are pleased to be able to announce that we have upgraded our CAD/CAM software to Radan’s 2011 R2 release. We can take 2D and 3D files from Solid works, Autodesk’s AutoCad and Inventor as well as any other Cad system that can produce DXF, DWG, SAT or STEP files. Again, Radan have improved the nesting algorithms to improve the material yield helping us to keep your prices down, which is crucial in the current material markets.

As before we can generate data within the software and export it to our Trumpf TruTops bend software and test out your designs for correct hole alignment between parts, any tooling clashes when CNC bending the parts and the best sheet metal material utilisation.

If you want more information on Radan’s software or how we can help you with your sheet metal component designs please just give us a call.

Chelsea flower show

Wednesday, June 1st, 2011

Green Roof Guttering

I was really pleased to see that a recent engineering project we were involved in to manufacture aluminium guttering for an engineered roofing system was used in a show garden at the Chelsea Flower show 2011. As well as being used for garden design the green roofing systems can be used to introduce greener spaces in urban environments.

If you have any projects that you think may benefit from the same treatment as above please contact us and we will pass on your details to the designers.

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New website up and running

Sunday, May 22nd, 2011

Punched hole with relation to the sheet metal panel edge

We are really pleased at V&F Sheet Metal to be able to announce that our new website is now up and running. Building on from the last website I wanted to offer customers more information on V&F, our manufacturing services (for those customers who are too far to call in) and most importantly a host of design data to aid you in the design of your sheet metal work. I want to be able to give you the ability check for yourself on our standard CNC punch press tooling whenever you are designing a feature so that you select a tool that is free and readily available to help reduce your lead time. With the bend data section I want to guide you to use the most appropriate bend sizes so that your design is achievable without any fuss or extra cost to you. Have you ever designed a product only to have to change it later to suit the manufacturing restrictions? Now you can save time and check out these standard bend sizes as you are drawing them.
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Second Trumpf 7036 CNC press brake, twice as good.

Thursday, April 7th, 2011

Trumpf 7036 up and running x 2

We were so pleased with the added CNC bending production and increased manufacturing flexibility that our first Trumpf 7036 press brake gave us in 2010 that we have installed a second (March 2011). With both CNC press brakes sharing CNC bending programs and CNC tooling we can move production schedules around to respond to the inevitable customer panics that come along (almost everyday).

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‘Easy bending’ by hand

Wednesday, February 23rd, 2011

Sheet metal gear plate with 'easy bend' lines

Customers are often looking to take product in a batch size that will enable them to get the right price but in doing so they may not have enough space to store the product until it’s all used up. This simple ‘flat pack’ trick may be the answer in some cases. By CNC punching a series of slots in the sheet metal the component can be weakened so it’s easy to bend by hand in assembly. The same principle can be used for earth tags where a quick push with a screw driver is enough to allow a terminal to be screwed in place.

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Saving bend time leads to cheaper components

Friday, February 18th, 2011

Multi-bend brackets

When a customer recently asked to us find a way of producing a sheet metal bracket cheaply we were interested to hear their idea of having the parts bent in a set. We were happy to work with them to produce a layout of components that we could produce with our standard CNC punch tooling and still produce the design they had to have. The brackets cannot be deburred whilst still left in their cnc nest sets which was not important in this case. The parts were CNC punched in blocks of 10 components and with 4 bends needed per part the bending time was reduced to a quarter.

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Engineering boring?

Monday, February 14th, 2011

I recently read this artical in the Eureka design magazine and thought this nicely summed up engineering today.

When Business Secretary Vince Cable’s recently expressed shock that that 49% of seven to 11 year-olds think it would be boring to be an engineer, it is tempting to think he may have been the only one in the room who was at all surprised.Can the poor image of the profession that has been allowed to seep through to our media and educational establishments really come as a surprise to anyone? Indeed, some may have been surprised the figure was that low.There is no point in me iterating all the reasons why this perception is wrong, of course. Continue reading →

Lighting reflector made from anodised aluminium – held together by ‘toy tags’

Monday, February 7th, 2011

toy tag assembly

Sometimes sheet metal parts can be tricky little things to join together if they cannot be made from one piece of metal. This reflector assembly has a group of sheet metal fins that need to be held in place inside an outer frame. Being pre-anodised aluminium with a highly polished surface they cannot be spot welded or TiG welded and anyway they are far too thin for that being made from 0.4mm thick material. The design needed to be clean too, so no nut and screws were allowed as they would have blocked the light output through the reflector. Where no great strength is needed in the finished part and the parent sheet metal can be easily bent with your fingers toy tags becomes a useful design solution.

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Design considerations when CNC punching sheet metal fabrications

Saturday, January 15th, 2011

What is CNC Punching?

CNC punching is a manufacturing process that is carried out by CNC punch presses on sheet metal materials. These machines can be either a single head and tool rail (Trumpf) design or multi-tool turret design. The machine is basically programmed to move a sheet of metal in an x and y direction so as to accurately position the sheet under the machine’s ram ready to punch a hole. The processing range for most CNC punch presses is 0.5mm to 6.0mm thick in a range of sheet metal materials including steel, stainless steel and aluminium. The choice of hole punched can be as simple as a circle or rectangle through to special shapes to suit a specific sheet metal design. By using a combination of single hits and overlapping geometries, complex can be produced. The machine may also punch 3D forms such as dimples, taptite screw thread plunges, electrical knockouts and earth tags which are often employed in sheet metal enclosure designs. Some modern sheet metal punch press machines may have the ability to tap threads, fold small tabs, punch sheared edges without any tool witness marks making the machine very productive within the component cycle time. The instruction to drive the machine to create the desired component geometry is known as the CNC program.
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Good things come in small packages …

Wednesday, January 12th, 2011

This little 0.9mm thick 304 stainless steel lever is typical of the smaller “tricky” sheet metal components we are often asked to manufacture for our customers. We were lucky this time in having a 3D SAT file from our customer direct from their Cad software which we could then read in our Radan sheet metal 3D solid modeller. Having this data gave us the advantage of producing a quick developed flat blank for CNC programming and a good reference point for inspection. With a few modifications agreed with the customer to make the part suitable for manufacturing, we could CNC punch and CNC bend the sheet metal part on our Trumpf plant. In this case the order was only for 2 samples with a view to production later in the year. CNC punching and CN

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Fibre optics sheet metal gear boxes

Monday, January 10th, 2011

Sheet metal enclosures manufactured from thin gauge mild steel are typical of the projects we specialise in. Utilising CNC punching and CNC bending techniques to produce the basic enclosure, batch sizes of 10’s to 1000’s are cost effective with our manufacturing plant. In the folded top faces we have used plunged and tapped forms (which enable a cover to be screwed down) produced on our CNC punch presses to save money rather than pressing in nutserts. These particular sheet metal enclosures are then powder coated after the corners have been Tig welded together. Continue reading →

CNC Engraving sheet metal components

Friday, January 7th, 2011

Often when manufacturing sheet metal fabrications for a customer they want to be able identify the part in their stores area or in production. Sheet metal parts which are then used in the field may need to be identified for spares and servicing, CNC engraving can be a useful solution. If there is a large volume of parts required then a part number stamp can be used but if there are a range of different sheet metal parts and only small to medium volumes then CNC engraving on our Trumpf 3000R is the most efficient solution.

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Sheet metal fabrications never looked so bright …

Thursday, January 6th, 2011

Only given a verbal description of the type of reflector our customer might want and a modified sample to go on we managed to create the final lighting reflector in just 3 days. Using our Radan 3D software to model several solutions and then manufacture a sample of the reflector to test the fit with our customer’s light housing took 2 days. The full production run of 200 components were finished using our Trumpf 200 punch press to CNC punch the parts and our Trumpf 7036 press brake to CNC bend them. Continue reading →

Off line CNC bending software now up and running

Wednesday, December 29th, 2010

V and F Sheet metal have installed off line software from Trumpf to aid the programming of their Trumpf 7036 press brake. The Trubend software has the ability to take data both in 3D and 2D formats directly from our customers or from our own Radan 3D modelling system, this enables us to check out jobs for bending problems before starting sheet metal production. Selecting the correct tooling and the most efficient bend sequence will enable us to reduce cycle times and keep your costs down when quoting you for your new sheet metal parts.

Trumpf 7036 press brake now producing sheet metal parts

Tuesday, December 21st, 2010

Small sheet metal parts bent at speedSmall sheet metal bracket

Once again V&F invest in equipment from the sheet metal industry’s leading machinery maker Trumpf. Our brand new Trumpf 7036 press brake will help reduce set up times when bending small components (up to 1m long), enabling us to produce components more economically and with shorter lead times. This investment will help you to keep your costs down when sourcing sheet metal parts from V&F.

Since this post was originally published we have added a second Trumpf 7036 CNC press brake giving us plenty of CNC bending capacity in our new Fareham factory in Hampshire.
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