Rolling sheet metal tubes in thin gauge material

Monday, January 30th, 2012

When round sheet metal components are needed in a sheet metal design there are several ways of achieving this shape. Firstly, if a standard round tube can be used in the design with a suitable diameter and wall size it’s easy to saw the tube to length and drill holes or weld it into a fabricated assembly. This cannot always be achieved with standard tube so then the tube would need to be created by rolling a sheet metal blank into a tube. This may be fully seam welded along the closing joint and then cleaned off smooth or sometimes just tack welded together at the sheet joint. This method does allow holes to be CNC punched first if a little distortion when being rolled up into a circular tube is not a problem in the final design. If a part circle is needed, say a semi-circle, the process of multi-bending on one of our CNC press brakes can be used. This consists of CNC punching the initial flat shape and then creating the curved form with a series of small bends at an angle to each other to create the flats at a tangent to the desired circumference. This manufacturing process can be very effective and with no special tooling cost effective for small batch work. The final method is to make up special form tooling to enable the sheet metal blanks to be pressed between top (punch) and bottom (die) tooling to create the curve in 1 or more hits.

With all sheet metal work designs it’s always worth a quick call to see which method would best suit depending on material, gauge, size and volume.