Mild steel equipment chassis
Electronic equipment housing sheet metal work
Here our customer needed a really strong chassis housing to act as an enclosure for equipment and as a base tray for all the components above. The equipment they are building has a large motor fixed into this chassis with high torque rates needing this tray to be 4mm thick mild steel. This tray along with its upper housing also acts as a barrier against explosion should the motor fail at high speed.
As ever we started this project by taking our customers DXF files and turning them into a 3D model within our Radan sheet metal software. This enables us to create the correct flat blank pattern needed for laser cutting. The mild steel blanks were laser cut from 2500 x 1250 x 4mm CR4 sheet using a nitrogen assist gas to produce a clean oxide free edge to all the cut-outs, slots and outer profile. This was particularly important as the final finished equipment housings were to be powder coated and a good adhesion was required. The folding was carried out on our Safan e-Brake CNC press brake and with 100 tons electric motive force there was no problem in bending up the 4mm steel into 90 degree bends. At the stage this photograph was taken the hank bushes had been inserted and it still needed to be welded up, cleaned off and then powder coated.
Sheet metal housing
This is simply another view of the same electronic equipment housing showing the corner details. It’s a good example of using the Radan 3D model to enable us to model the type of joint we want to enable us to create an easy weld that has penetration and a V gap built into the design ready for the welders to use without any pre-weld grinding. With the accuracy of the laser cutter we can fine tune this joint to the welders needs and once the weld is cleaned up the housing will look like a continual solid part without any joints under the powder coating. Another feature worth mentioning is the ventilation slots on the left had side of the photograph which have been laser cut to the drawing dimensions. Using a laser cutter we had the freedom to give the customer exactly what they wanted without having to compromise on using the nearest CNC tool or nibbling the slots out. The laser also gives us the ability to easily change the size if the customer wants more air flow with longer or wider ventilation slots without any cost implications.
This electronic equipment housing tray was just one of a series of parts all modelled together to create an assembly so that in production all the holes lined up, tolerances worked to enable us to be sure the outer covers fitted on the base and all welded brackets had tabs that fitted into slots to aid production. If you have a sheet metal work project that requires housings and covers in mild steel, stainless steel or aluminium please give us a call on 01489 577786 or feel free to send us your design ideas to sales@vandf.co.uk and our engineering team will be happy to help you explore your options and the best route for manufacturing.