Sheet Metal Box Design Guide

Sheet metal materials are the most commonly used materials in the structural design of communication products.

Sheet metal box design guide.

To make things easy for my students i designed our classroom box so it would be able to work on the size of a standard 8 5 x 11 piece of paper. Sheet metal design guidelines are followed to design quality sheet metal enclosures. This helps in delivering the product at low cost and faster timelines. Therefore when sheet metal has complex bends consider splitting a complex bend into two parts.

Bends in the same plane should be designed in the same direction. Because sheet metal parts are manufactured from a single sheet of metal the part must maintain uniform wall thickness. Sheet metal boxes are two part enclosures made by cutting metal sheets and then bending the resulting parts using a press brake to form a box. Similarly the more complicated the sheet metal bending process the more material waste may be caused.

Understanding the comprehensive performance of materials and the correct material selection have an important impact on product cost product performance product quality and processability. Columnist gerald davis continues a discussion of 3 d cad and precision sheet metal manufacturing in part iii of a four part series focusing on design guidelines for sheet metal. In the improved design the sheet metal only needs one bending process to complete the bending of the two sides at the same time. The box i have my students create in class ends up being 5 5 x 2 x 3 5.

0 609mm to 0 138 in. Sheet metal thickness ranges from 0 024 in. The most common sheet metal form is a bend. Therefore exceptions can be there for complex features design.

Previous editions covered economic order quantity in batch production and the accuracy of things made from rolled sheet stock. The patterns for a cardboard box will look very similar to what you need to plan out for the sheet metal box. Next month concludes with the pros and cons of hems jogs and forming tools. Bends can give strength and shape to a part and are formed in a machine using bend brakes.

Beyond sheet metal properties and available materials here are eight ways to improve sheet metal parts. When designing parts for laser cutting one should not make holes smaller than the thickness of the material. Aside from that a variety of metals is available including stainless steel aluminum cold rolled and galvanized steel and even copper and brass in thicknesses ranging from 0 02 in. A 1 degree tolerance on all bend angles.

Bends in sheet metal are manufactured using sheet metal brakes. Depending on the alloy. By adding cutouts for ports switches ventilation or mounting these versatile and cost effective enclosures can be used in applications ranging from electronics to robotics.