Sheet Metal Bending

Now that your forms are placed you should clamp your sheet between your form.

Sheet metal bending.

If you want to make a flange that has one or two ends chamfered the previous rule of a minimum flange. The solution is to have a radius on the tool that you ll be using to bend the metal. Creating a change in the part s geometry. Support your excess sheet.

Hole distance from. A cutout or the edge of your. Place your forms in your vise. To use the tables below.

Your forms will have an edge that should match the angle of your desired bend. If you bend to a sharp inside corner with sheet metal you ll be adding a ton of internal stresses. Even on malleable materials you can end up cracking the metal at the bend or weakening it to the point where it ll break with minimal force. See the bending force chart for.

To think about bending a sheet of metal that has appreciable thickness focus on an imaginary central sheet the so called neutral line or neutral axis within the thickness. Bending your sheet metal with a vise 1. There exists a minimum flange length as stated already before. Sheet metal bending should be as perpendicular as possible to the direction of the metal fiber.

Choose a bend radius that matches your minimum bend. Determine your minimum bend by measuring the distance from your closest feature i e. Similar to other metal forming processes bending changes the shape of the work piece while the volume of material will remain the same. Likewise when you are trying to develop a flat pattern you will have to make a deduction from your desired part size to get the correct flat size.

Clamp your sheet metal in your vise. When the sheet metal bend is parallel to the direction of the fiber of the metal material cracks are likely to occur at the bend of the sheet metal and the bending strength is low and it is easy to break as shown in the following figure. As this happens you gain a small amount of total length in your part. Bending of sheet metal is a common and vital process in manufacturing industry.