Any professional sheet metal fabrication company strives to guarantee superb design and a generally satisfactory user experience. Designing high-quality custom sheet metal cabinets goes a long way in helping achieve this goal. Even so, a lot goes into designing superior sheet metal cabinets, and shockingly, only a few know the creative process behind it.
There are several steps associated with sheet metal cabinet design, and understanding these crucial actions will make your experience easier and help you identify the best custom sheet cabinet for your needs.
Here are detailed guidelines and vital tips to help explain how to design a custom sheet metal cabinet. Let’s get into it!
Start with the Suitable Sheet Metal Material and Thickness
An essential step in the custom sheet metal cabinet/enclosure design is selecting the thickness and type of sheet metal for construction. The market is saturated with diverse material options, each with a unique characteristic that suits its particular application. For instance:
- Cold rolled steel. A perfect blend of durability and high stiffness in indoor settings. Copper is a low-cost material hence a preferred option as an enclosure material.
- Corrosion-resistant and lightweight material hence ideal for various custom cabinets. Aluminum also allows different finish styles like grained finished, anodized, or barefaced, among others, to cater to different aesthetic and electrical uses.
- Stainless steel. Robust material that offers corrosion resistance, stiffness, and strength. Stainless steel also allows for different finishing options.
- Soft, malleable, and flexible material offers superb electrical and thermal conductivity. Like aluminum, copper accommodates multiple finishing styles.
- It features an exclusive coating that distinguishes it from standard cold-rolled steel, especially for wet settings.
After selecting the suitable sheet metal type needed for the design, we pick the appropriate sheet metal thickness/gauge for your custom cabinet. Depending on your unique needs, we can design a customized sheet metal cabinet just for you.
Choose the Proper Sheet Metal Bend Radius and Bending Technique
Sheet metal cabinets are produced when we professionally bend sheet metal with a press brake or folder. Folders are mainly used to create accurate bends fast, while press brakes produce comparatively sharp bends, which folders can’t produce.
Typically, it is impossible to bend sheet metal into a 90-degree angle accurately, hence the reason for the curve in the corners of the folded/bent sheet metal. Experts can produce different curvature degrees by using different bending and tooling techniques.
The accuracy and uniqueness of Custom sheet metal cabinets depend on the selection of a suitable bend radius (the radius of the bends inside the surface).
Apply the Suitable Welding Technique
Once the process of folding or bending the individual sheet metal pieces is completed, these pieces are welded together. Welding a custom cabinet is advantageous since it offers more watertight and more robust joints and cheaper, simpler assembly processes.
There are several welding techniques used, including:
- Seam welding.A welding technique suited for properly joining sheet metal along continuous edges.
- Spot welding. It is a uniquely affordable and efficient welding technique for permanently joining sheet metal pieces in one or several locations.
- Tack welding. This method is suitable for joining sheet metal pieces along continuous segments.
For the Perfect Custom Sheet Metal Cabinet
Designing custom sheet metal cabinets is an intricate process. Ideally, if you skip a step or miss an element, the final product may operate differently than intended. Choosing a reputable sheet metal cabinet company, like VASUCC Precision Sheet Metal Fabrication Solutions, can prevent costly design blunders.
Precision Sheet Metal Fabrication Solutions offers the machinery, expertise, and experience necessary to design and produce a custom sheet metal cabinet to suit your unique needs. For more information on custom sheet metal cabinets, feel free to contact us today.
