Closed Sheet Metal Box Design

A press brake creates a bend by pressing sheet metal into a die with a linear punch so design does not allow the creation of closed geometry.

Closed 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. The patterns for a cardboard box will look very similar to what you need to plan out for the sheet metal box. When designing parts for laser cutting one should not make holes smaller than the thickness of the material. A 1 degree tolerance on all bend angles.

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. Next month concludes with the pros and cons of hems jogs and forming tools. The box i have my students create in class ends up being 5 5 x 2 x 3 5. Please subscribe our c.

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. Understanding the comprehensive performance of materials and the correct material selection have an important impact on product cost product performance product quality and processability. Sheet metal parts with a minimum of 0 9mm to 20mm in thickness can be manufactured. Previous editions covered economic order quantity in batch production and the accuracy of things made from rolled sheet stock.

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. Sheet metal tolerances are far more generous than machining or 3d printing tolerances. Bends in sheet metal are manufactured using sheet metal brakes. Drawing a sheet metal box in solidworks 2010.