Closed Sheet Metal Box Design

Sheet metal tolerances are far more generous than machining or 3d printing tolerances.

Closed sheet metal box design.

Drawing a sheet metal box in solidworks 2010. 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. The box i have my students create in class ends up being 5 5 x 2 x 3 5. Sheet metal materials are the most commonly used materials in the structural design of communication products.

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. 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. When designing parts for laser cutting one should not make holes smaller than the thickness of the material.

Bends in sheet metal are manufactured using sheet metal brakes. 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. Factors affecting tolerances include material thickness machines used and number of steps in part production. Next month concludes with the pros and cons of hems jogs and forming tools.

In this tutorial video i will sketch power box chassis in solidworks with the help of sketch and sheet metal tools i hope you like it. The patterns for a cardboard box will look very similar to what you need to plan out for the sheet metal box. A 1 degree tolerance on all bend angles. Please subscribe our c.