Branding is one of the fundamental necessities for modern companies that wish to promote their businesses through selling unique products. If you want your products to be totally distinct from those sold by other market players, you might need to build totally new designs with custom-made specifications. This is where the concept of metal fabrication comes in. It is basically the process of constructing metal structures through trimming, bending and assembling processes. It helps come up with innovative products designed to meet unique business and individual needs.
While normal fabrication procedures for wood and plastic use light cutting instruments such as knives, scissors and razors to size the material, metal fabrication requires procedural cutting processes such as sawing, shearing and chiselling using either manual or powered variants. Advanced cutting can be made using hand-held torches such as plasmas and oxyfuel torches, as well as numerical control cutters (CNC) using mill bits, water jets, lasers and torches.
Bending involves a number of processes used to shape metal into distinct looks. It can be done by hammering or using press brakes to apply bending force to push the metal to the required shape. The biggest challenge, when it comes to bending of metals, is shaping surfaces to exact requirements without wasting the material. Modern metal fabricators use press brakes to air bend or coin metal sheets into form. CNC controlled gauges use hard stops to position the metal sheet appropriately on the shaping plane before tracing bend lines on the right location. Recent developments in the industry have seen the creation of off-line programming software that makes the design of CNC controlled brakes very efficient.
Most industrial products require a collection of independent metal parts to build the entire structure. Once every piece has been shaped and bent to perfection, developers then follow assembling procedures to join the different parts together. Assembling processes include welding, riveting, binding using adhesives or formation of crimped seams. Sheet metal and structural steel are the usual starting materials in metal fabrication, along with flux, welding wire and fasteners. Just as in other manufacturing processes, both automation procedures and human labour are crucial for successful product finishing. The product of fabrication processes is known as a fabrication, while shops that specialize in this type of work are called fab shops. Metal fabrication normally overlaps and comprises of various metalwork specialties. It is however distinct in the fact that it mainly specializes on metal preparation and assembly than product design and finishing.
