Choosing Steel For Sheet Metal Bending

For most projects steel stainless steel aluminum and copper have a good range of properties and are easily available at a reasonable price.

Choosing steel for sheet metal bending.

Choosing the right gauge sheet metal for your fabrication. Very bendable when fully annealed. Also known as press braking flanging die bending folding and edging this method is used to deform a material to an angular shape. A radius that is larger than the thickness of the material has no aesthetical issues.

This is very malleable and you should be able to bend it cold without problem. When bending steel no material is lost and no material is gained. Standard type magnetic stainless for sheet metal fabrication is the 400 series. Thereby forming a certain angle and curvature shape.

Now moving into something that will be more specific to each customer and each sheet metal project. Commonly used bends include v bend z bend offset bend and hemming bend etc. To use the tables below. Red for left green for right and yellow for straight.

When you re getting started on a metal project the first step is determining what type of material will work best. When folding sheet metal if the resulting radius is less than the thickness we are bending then the extra material must go somewhere and can cause an undesirable deformation. Determine your minimum bend by measuring the distance from your closest feature i e. A cutout or the edge of your flange to your bend.

This is choosing the right thickness or gauge of sheet metal. Stainless steel there are a number of grades to choose from for the purpose of this white paper we will focus on the top three found in precision sheet metal fabrication. Austenitic stainless is a non magnetic any of the 300 series steel that contains high levels of chromium and nickel and low levels of carbon. If you try to bend it when it s hardened it ll probably snap.

Commonly known as aviation snips or tinsnips these scissor like tools are great for cutting soft sheet metals such as tin aluminum brass and thin gauge 24 gauge or thinner steel. Choose a bend radius that matches your minimum bend. Grade 410 offers less corrosion resistance but is heat treatable. You ll need to heat treat it again to get it to perform like spring steel once it s formed in the shape you want.

Building with metal is great it s strong versatile and looks cool. This is done through the application of force on a workpiece. It is very important that you are using the correct product to optimize efficiency and functionality. Depending on the cut shape you ll use left cut right cut or straight snips typically indicated by the handle color.

The sheet metal bending height should be at least 2 times the thickness of the sheet metal plus the bending radius that is h 2t r. Bending is one of the most common sheet metal fabrication operations.