Sheet metal, in very simple words, is metal shaped into flat and thin pieces. One of the most basic forms or components used in metalworking; sheet metal parts can be cut and formed into numerous shapes.
Innumerable everyday materials are made from sheet metal parts & components. Their thicknesses can vary to a high degree. The extremely thin sheet metal pieces are referred to as foil or leaf, and materials thicker than 6 mm (0.25 inch) are termed as plate. These are basically available as coiled strips or flat pieces. The coils are made by passing a continuous sheet of metal through a roll slitter.
 The thickness of the sheet metal piece is known as its gauge (also spelled 'gage'), which ranges from 30 gauge to about 8 gauge. As the gauge rises, metal becomes thinner. There are a number of metals that can be formed into sheet metal parts & components. Some of these are copper, aluminum, steel, brass, tin, titanium and nickel. Sheet metal components primarily find application in airplane wings, car bodies, roofs for building and many other fields. These can be fabricated into numerous designs and shapes for standard applications.
Automobile is one of the major user segments of sheet metal parts & components and India has emerged as one of the most dynamic automobile markets in the world. Automobile manufacturers fundamentally source sheet metal parts & components from steel majors and fabricate the body panels. Fine quality and sturdy sheet metal parts provide long operating life to different automobiles. Some of the commonly used automotive sheet metal parts & components are as follows:
- Foot Paddles
- Wobbling Fixture
- Silencer Parts
- Stamped Parts
- Automatic Slack Adjuster
- Automobile Brackets
- Engine Mounting Brackets
- Panel Dash Side
- Tooling Dies
- Sheet Bushes/Pins
- Fuel Tank Vessels/Baffle/Caps
-
 Air Filter Parts
- Autometer Brackets
- Hub Clutch and many more
The sheet metal components are formed by passing the metal through various metal working processes viz. deep drawing, cutting, perforating, spinning, press brake forming, roll forming, rolling, stamping, bending, ironing, wheeling, incremental sheet forming and de-cambering. These sort of forming process require application of mechanical force at room temperature. There are also a few associated processes like heat treatment, plating and thermal spraying, which are not basically metalworking processes but are often undertaken prior to or after metalworking processes.
|
