Bending Aluminium Sheet

In high purity forms aluminum is soft and ductile.

Bending aluminium sheet.

Heavy gauge aluminum bars or rods must be heat bent using an acetylene torch and vice. Bending is one of the most common sheet metal fabrication operations. This weakens the aluminium and creates a fracture line. Sheet aluminium can be cut without the need for a guillotine or tin snips which tend to deform the metal.

In this post we ll explain it to you. This is a highly technical and potentially dangerous process best left to a professional metalworker. Highly formable and one of the best kinds of aluminum to bend. 6061 t6 aluminum is tempered and notorious for not bending easily.

Place the fracture line over the edge of a table and bend the overhang slightly downwards. The bend radius you select may not be available if the geometry of the part will not allow us to bend with the specific tooling required to achieve that radius. We re having trouble bending 6061 t6 aluminum without cracking and i was wondering if you could give us a few pointers. The force must exceed the material s yield strength to achieve a plastic deformation.

Bending is a delicate and demanding process most of the time and common fabricating processes require a degree of formability that make your choice of proper alloy critical. Also known as press braking flanging die bending folding and edging this method is used to deform a material to an angular shape. Use the minimum bend dimension values in the charts below for your minimum closeness of cutout to a bend. Proper bending can be done with annealing the aluminum first although it s not an ideal candidate for formed parts.

With the aid of a straight edge and a sharp knife score both sides of the aluminium sheet. Miserable to bend cracking is very common and cold bending will always weaken the metal. Commonly used equipment include box and pan brakes brake presses and other specialized machine presses typical products that are made like this are boxes such as electrical enclosures and rectangular ductwork. Bending sheet metal by hand is a manageable task if the piece of sheet metal is small and thin enough to handle.

This is done through the application of force on a workpiece. From a bending perspective it s always best to bend these parts in an annealed state and then temper them to the correct condition. Which aluminum alloy bends the best is a a common question customers want the answer to. Most frequently expensive sheet metal bending tools called brakes are used to bend sheet metal but you can also complete this task without one.