Sheet Metal Box Design

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.

Sheet metal box design.

When designing parts for laser cutting one should not make holes smaller than the thickness of the material. The patterns for a cardboard box will look very similar to what you need to plan out for the sheet metal box. Sheet metal fabrication is a non additive non subtractive process. The box i have my students create in class ends up being 5 5 x 2 x 3 5.

The bending angle of the box is 90 90 and 80 from bottom to top. A 1 degree tolerance on all bend angles. That s why we love it. Sheet metal parts with a minimum of 0 9mm to 20mm in thickness can be manufactured.

It can be bent warped and folded easily. 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. It saves time less de burring gives. It begins with flat material and by definition maintains constant material thickness throughout a part.

The material of the box body is 304 stainless steel with a thickness of 1 5mm and the size of 200mm 200mm 115mm. The md building products 36 in. 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. Bends in sheet metal are manufactured using sheet metal brakes.

The schematic diagram of the box structure is shown in figure 1. 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. In some cases areas of a part can be selectively thickened by welding multiple metal sheets together but this is a.

Previous editions covered economic order quantity in batch production and the accuracy of things made from rolled sheet stock. It is easy to work with and very attractive in the home. X 36 the md building products 36 in. Hems are created when you fold over the metal back onto itself.

Design considerations for sheet metal fabrication. Sheet metal in a flat sheet is not very sturdy. 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. Depending on the alloy.

The sheet features a union jack style perforated design. But when you re designing a sheet metal part add a few strength enhancing features to make sure your part lasts for generations.