Sheet Metal Manufacturing and BIW (Body In White)
Since you're learning sheet metal manufacturing, let's go through the complete process from raw sheet to finished product. This knowledge is very useful for production, BIW, and interview preparation. 1. Raw Material CRCA sheet Hot Rolled (HR) Stainless Steel (SS) Aluminium Galvanized (GI) 2. Laser Cutting Purpose: Cut the flat blank according to the CAD profile. Design considerations: Minimum hole diameter ≥ material thickness. Avoid very narrow slots. Keep adequate distance between holes and edges. Reduce sharp internal corners. Use proper lead-in/lead-out. ↓ 3. Turret Punch Press A turret punch uses a rotating turret containing many punch and die sets. Operations performed Punching (holes) Blanking Slotting Louvers Embossing Extrusions Countersinks Nibbling (for complex shapes) Advantages Very fast for repetitive holes. No laser gas required. Can form features that a laser cannot. Limitations Tooling cost. Limited to available punch shapes. Leaves small punch marks . ↓ 4. ...