Here’s some new examples of sheet metal fabrication and assembly I’ve spotted in our factory.
Sheet metal work spot welded assembly
Spot welding is a great way of joining thin sheets of metal together in a permanent way. The process is fast, simple, cheap and produces little or no distortion at the point of the joint. There is a small burn mark and witness where the 2 copper spot welding tips come together to momentarily squeeze the molten spot of metal together. On most occasions this type of welded joint is not seen as in this case of these air conditioning fan housings. No further cosmetic cleaning up was needed as they were assembled into a larger outer sheet metal case and now seen by the final customer. When the spot welds are seen, for instance on a front panel, we can cleaned them off and orbital the outer surface before say painting so that there is no visible sign of the spot welded joint. You can see on these units that we have applied several spot welds to each bracket to ensure they do not fail in use. These sheet metal fabricated assemblies illustrate quite a range of manufacturing techniques including CNC punching, CNC press brake angle bending with standard tooling, forming of curved sections with custom tooling, inserted hank bushes, assembly and of course spot welding.
The ability of sheet metal work to encompass such a range of different techniques is its biggest strength enabling it to take on so many different forms to meet a customer’s design requirements.
Sheet metal presswork and assembly
Here we have a formed end cap that is assembled to long bent slats in 12 places by means of a series of hollow rivets. The end caps have been run through power press tooling to firstly produce the blanks with the holes pierced in place. There is then a second power press tool to form the end cap sides up all in one operation producing soft rounded corners. The slats are made separately from cut strips of Zintec sheet with fixing holes positions pierced in our fly presses and then the ends are bent up to match the fixing positions in the end caps. Once the rivets are pulled into position all the thin Zintec coated mild steel parts become very strong. Using press tools enables us to manufacture sheet metal components in just a few quick operations and this type of production method is best suited to higher volumes of work due to the initial cost of tooling at the start of a design project.
Sheet metal work folding and assembly
These end cap assemblies are very similar to the ones show above except that they have end caps that have been laser cut and folded up on our CNC press brakes rather than formed in press tooling. The method of assembly to make up the fabrications is the same rivet method used. Laser cutting and CNC bending up the end caps isn’t as fast as dedicated hard press tools but does has the advantage of being able to be easily changed to suit new design ideas and updates without any tool costs. You have to decide whether a design will be stable enough and the volumes high enough to suit press tooling over CNC punching / laser cutting and CNC bending.
We are happy to review components in both ways for you to see what would be the best price and method of production for your new sheet metal fabrication assemblies.