An Overview of Sheet Metal Fabrication in Umatilla County, OR

Sheet metal fabrication is one of the most common forms of metal fabrication and machining you’ll find used in industrial settings today. There is a wide variety of techniques that can be used for sheet metal fabrication—here’s an overview of a few of them from a sheet metal supplier in Umatilla County, OR:

• Resistance welding: If you need to join a pair of stainless steel sheets together, resistance welding will give you some of the best possible results you can find. A medium frequency direct current weld, for example, is computer-controlled and provides you with a significant amount of accuracy and durability in your final weld. This is an ideal welding process, and can create stainless steel welds extremely quickly while cutting down on spatter, weld burns and other potential issues commonly associated with manual welding.
• Metal brake bending: Just about any sheet metal manufacturer will be able to tell you about metal brakes and how they can be used to create more accurate and precise bends in sheet metal. Again, CNC is a technology that can be used in conjunction with certain types of brakes to automate the metal brake bending process, allowing you to create perfect angles in a highly efficient and repeatable manner. These applications allow you to apply several tons of force nearly instantaneously so you can form any angle you desire in the metal for just about any application.
• Expanding metal: Typically, to create more open space in a metal object, you’d be required to use a wire mesh or cut holes into some sheet metal with a CNC laser or punch. However, you can also put sheets or metal through an expanding machine, which can be a more efficient process. The expanding machine essentially stretches out the metal you feed into it. That machine features a sort of knife that is designed to cut out a series of shapes into the metal (usually diamonds, but it can also feature squares, hexagons or other various types of shapes). What’s worth noting about this process is that it doesn’t result in any lost material—the sheet metal stretches around the knife, which creates the holes. You end up with the same amount of material stretched over a larger area. The benefit of this process is that it provides you with stronger metal than a wire mesh, and it is also lighter than solid sheets and does not result in wasting raw metal materials.
• Laser cutting: One of the most popular methods of sheet metal fabrication, laser cutting is used to create a perfectly smooth cut in the metal that does not stress the material. You can easily do this in whatever shape you need. It is a great alternative to CNC punching, because it results in less stress on the material around the hole.

These are just a few examples of some of the most common methods of sheet metal fabrication in Umatilla County, OR. Contact the team at NW Metal Fabricators Inc. today to learn more.

Categorised in: Metal Fabrication, Sheet Metal Supplier

This post was written by Writer