Sheet Metal Fabrication

Bending – Form bending and metal brake make up the two techniques we use to bend metal. This technique enables us to bend metal over some form of shape or edge placed below it, making it the simplest metal bending method. A shaping dolly or hammer comes in handy when getting this job done.

Metal brakes also allow us to make accurate and clean metal bends. We put the metal on a flat and gated surface. Clamping the metal with a flat bar while raising the gated portion of the surface beneath enables us to bend it at any angle of choice. Although this is the most common way of making metal bends, most metal brakes can create slightly more than 90 degree angles.

We also stock a diverse selection of sheet metal brakes for custom aluminum fabrication.

Cutting – We use hand shears, power shears, throatless shears, angle grinders and plasma cutters to cut sheet metal. Hand shears are the most important of all metal fabrication tools hence should be the first in your shopping list. We also stock a complete line of aviation snips and hand shears, ranging from specialized jaws to left and right snips (simple and straight tools).

Throatless Shears, also mechanical shears, enable us to cut sheet metal radii and shapes without marring the cut edges or cut sheet metal in straight lines. The shears are typical of hinged blades that move down to cut sheet metal lying on an adjacent fixed blade such as the ‘Beverly Shear.’ When making many steel metal cuts, these tools come in handy, minimizing waste on material. We have an economy bench-mounted throatless shear in stock.

Also known as ‘power scissors,’ power shears cut sheet metal faster and with little to no manual effort. Ranging from electric to pneumatic shears, cutting tight corners or intricate shapes can be hard. Instead, you can use more specialized ‘nibblers’ or throatless power shears. The con side of these sheet metal cutting tools is that they lead to material wastage.

Plasma Cutters are powerful and aggressive sheet metal fabricators. They are extremely fast, accurate and result in minimal material waste. They come in handy when there’s a need to make long straight cuts. Our plasma cutters can enable you to paper-thin sheet metal of up to 0.75’’ steel.

Angle Grinders are a must have for your sheet metal fabrication shop. They come with fast-spinning cutting wheels or disks. They come in handy when there’s a need to cut sheet metal layers. On the con side, they are messy and noisy. We stock a diverse selection of angle grinders to support our metal fabrication jobs.

Shrinking – We use tucking (a traditional method) and heat shrinking techniques to shrink metal. A tucking fork or spade hammer and crevices, do the job well. Angle grinders with shrinking discs create heat using friction to precisely shrink sheet metal. Although a shrinker is slower, it gives more precise results than hammer tucking. It also imparts marring on the sheet metal; however, a sanding file or disc can easily smooth it out.

Stretching – we use a hammer and dolly, stretcher and DIY English Wheel in our aluminum custom fabrication stretching jobs. The English Wheel can help smooth out sheet metal imperfections resulting from using the technique.

Metal Fusion – we commonly weld small metal panels together to come up with a larger piece. We are knowledgeable in Oxy Acetylene, TIG and MIG welding techniques. Unlike Oxy welding, TIG gives more accurate results. Oxy and TIG are soft welds whereas MIG is the hardest and easiest to learn. We stock TIG welders, MIG welders and TIG welding supplies. Our welders are ideal for both light and heavy fabrication jobs.