Sheet Metal Box Design Guide

The patterns for a cardboard box will look very similar to what you need to plan out for the sheet metal box.

Sheet metal box design guide.

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 design guidelines are followed to design quality sheet metal enclosures. 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.

Beyond sheet metal properties and available materials here are eight ways to improve sheet metal parts. 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. Sheet metal materials are the most commonly used materials in the structural design of communication products. 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.

Understanding the comprehensive performance of materials and the correct material selection have an important impact on product cost product performance product quality and processability. The most common sheet metal form is a bend. 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. When designing parts for laser cutting one should not make holes smaller than the thickness of the material.

Previous editions covered economic order quantity in batch production and the accuracy of things made from rolled sheet stock. 0 609mm to 0 138 in. Next month concludes with the pros and cons of hems jogs and forming tools. Similarly the more complicated the sheet metal bending process the more material waste may be caused.

This helps in delivering the product at low cost and faster timelines. A 1 degree tolerance on all bend angles. 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. Since sheet metal cannot be bent to a 90 degree position without breaking at sharp corners all bends will have an acceptable bend radius.

The box i have my students create in class ends up being 5 5 x 2 x 3 5. Therefore when sheet metal has complex bends consider splitting a complex bend into two parts. Sheet metal parts with a minimum of 0 9mm to 20mm in thickness can be manufactured. Sheet metal thickness ranges from 0 024 in.

Depending on the alloy. Therefore exceptions can be there for complex features design. Bends can give strength and shape to a part and are formed in a machine using bend brakes.