Metal Fabrication Processes in Vancouver

Vancouver Fabrication Company

To achieve a desired final product, Vancouver metal fabrication companies use several different types of metal fabrication processes.

Metal is one of the most common types of raw material used for its flexible serviceability in the manufacturing industry. In general, metal fabrication involves any process that forms, shapes, and assembles various metal parts together through removal and deformation of the raw materials.

Professional metal fabricators have a set of preferences to build elementary parts and final products as per specification through the optimization of overall production process.  Metal fabrication process covers two basic categories: Removal Process and Deformation Process.

The removal process includes a number of methods that remove the spare portion from the raw metal bars or sheets. Here are a few major techniques involved in the removal process.

Cutting Metal

Cutting metal is one of the basic tasks for the fabricators to get started with any fabrication works. Aviation snips continues to be the common tools for cutting metals. Power-scissors are used in many cases to cut metal more quickly with less manual effort. Laser beams and mechanical saw blades are used to remove large amounts of materials and performs better in case of carbon steel, titanium, aluminum, stainless steel and copper alloys.

Machining

Machining is a process that is used to remove spare portions of materials on a lathe, or cutting machine having a rotating tool. The range of motion of cutting head depends on the number of axes in the cutting machine.

Punching

The punch and die tool operates on pressure to create holes of various geometric shapes including circles, rectangles and squares in the material and take out the scrap or slug.

Stamping

Stamping is very much similar to punching. The only difference is that there is no penetration involved and the dies simply creates a raised portion of the material without cutting.

Shearing

Shearing is a combination of two tools positioned above and below the metal sheet to make an extensive cut on the sheet metal with the application of adequate pressure.

Nibbling

This process creates multiple slits or notches in the metal in an overlapping fashion to cut a contour. This enables the fabricator to create ornate shapes. Various sizes and shapes including rectangular and oblong punches minimize the waste of materials compared to a circular punch.

The basic mechanism of metal deformation process is the utilization of applied force to change the geometrical dimensions of a piece of sheet metal without removing any parts of it. This modification in geometrical dimensions is done to get a certain design with desired specification.

The relevant processes include:

Bending

In most cases, fabricators make use of a press brake machine containing the punch as an upper tool and the die as a lower tool. This machine can be operated automatically or manually. This process bends a flat sheet of metal, and deforms the material to achieve intended design specification. This machine uses a manual computer numerical control that can specify the size of bending angle. The movement of the metal components, and the configurations and shapes of the dies limit the use of this operation in metal deformation process.

Roll Forming

In this process, the sheet metal stock is sent through a batch of roll stations and the sheet metal is shaped through a progressive series of deforming operations. The metal bends and deforms while it is forced through the roller dies. Fabricators use lubricants to minimize the metal friction and reduce potential tool wear.

Spinning

This process rotates a blank – a piece cut from sheet metal – to fabricate various cylindrical components with the application of force to one side only.  Spinning is a useful process used to produce various products such as cookware, hubcaps, satellite dishes, rocket nose cones and musical instrument.

Deep Drawing

The key mechanism of this process is the stretching of sheet metal to achieve the intended design and shape. This is particularly useful in case of ductile materials including brass, aluminum and copper. A downward pressure is placed on the sheet metal by a tool and the tensile force is applied simultaneously to deform the sheet metal into a cup-like shape. Deep drawing process is very common in the fabrication of cups, cans, pots, kitchen sinks, fuel tanks and various automotive parts and bodies.

Our North Vancouver metal shop is equipped with all the necessary machinery, manpower and skill to fabricate your metal projects. If you have an idea or any question for a project be sure to contact us and we’d be happy to discuss them with you.