sheet metal forming

[hk51]

Dear board members,

I need some help forming this sheet metal part 1,5 mm (0,095) inch thick.

please see the link for pictures

http://tinypic.com/fdekgw.jpg
http://tinypic.com/fdekgw.jpg
http://tinypic.com/fdeh52.jpg

Drawings made in Solid Edge V16

Email at hk51@xs4all.nl

gr Anthony

[hk51]

I was thinking to make it out of two pieces and welding together ,

see link for pictures

http://tinypic.com/fdf3ba.jpg
http://tinypic.com/fdf32r.jpg

please let me know,

greetings ,

Anthony

[ctardi]

That would work...

[Ries]

Pretty fancy part- and a lot of shapes that are pretty tough to make with simple tools. In industry, assuming you needed 10,000 of these a month, you could probably punch it first on a cnc turret punch, stamp part of it, and bend it with a cnc press brake.
But for just a few parts, its very complicated. How many do you need? What is the material, and thickness? Dimensions? What do you think it should cost?

The way it changes width, so the linear bends are not continuous, makes it really tough.
Does it really have to be exactly this shape?
Usually there are ways to redesign to take advantage of the way tools work.

It would be easy enough to cnc laser cut or turret punch the shape, with the rectangular slot, and the round holes, then bend it with a press brake, IF it didnt do that ziggy zag thing.

By hand, onseies or twosies, you could build it up from a bunch of parts welded together- I think more than two, maybe 3 would be the smallest number possible. And you could hammerform two parts to get those radiused edge indents. They handmake prototype intake manifolds for cars that way.

[hk51]

I need about 20 to start, if ok up to 50

Also thought about cnc milling the inserts

laser cut the flatt, bent the U form ,and weld in the inserts (tig)

Thanks,

Anthony

[Ries]

I think that is going to be the quickest, easiest way to go.
CNC mill/ with laser, one tig weld seam.
The big advantage is no permanent tooling needs to be built- a die to stamp this could run 10 grand. So it would need to be amortized over tens of thousands of parts.
hopefully the tig weld doesnt need to be ground off inside that thing- a decent tig welder, using almost no filler rod, could basically fusion weld this thing, with minimal bead sticking up afterwards.

[Ralph_Monroe_Mi]

Anthony,
The inset part of your 2 piece design could be successfully made over a hammer form with the exception of the upper inside corner. It will require shrinking as the metal gathers to round the corner. I don't believe you can successfully do that with .095 metal. You may need to go to a 4 piece design, making the inside corners up seperately. They would then go from a shrink to a simpler bend and stretch.

Let us know how you come out on this one.

[hk51]

Thanks Guy's

I will inform you on the progress


Thanks,

Anthony