heavy Structural Fabrication

HEAVY STRUCTURAL FABRICATION PROCESSES:

• Cutting – Often regarded as one of the most basic methods of fabrication, cutting steel is a task that needs to be carried out with the utmost accuracy. The unprocessed material may appear in the form of metallic sheets which is sawed or trimmed using huge machines. Naturally, the cutting precision depends on the type of equipment being used. While using CNC lathes might be the most familiar method of cutting steel, metal workers also use oxy acetylene torches to cut the metal into the desired shapes and sizes.
•  Folding – Structural steel components are also obtained by bending sheet metals into shape. The traditional techniques refer to manually-operated dies carrying out the work. However, with the advent of technology, these antiquated methods have been substituted by modern machinery such as press brakes, box and pan brakes, cornice brakes, etc.
• Machining – This is the process of removing metal from a piece of material. It might be done on a lathe, where the material rotates against a cutting tool, or in some other cutting machine where a rotating tool is moved in a variety of ways against a stationary piece. Drills fall into this latter category. The range of motion of the cutting head is defined by the number of axes (i.e. a 3-axis machine).
•  Punching – Here, a metal sheet is perforated through a combined process of the punch and die. This ‘scissor’ effect is only possible if the punch and die are of the same dimensions.
•  Shearing – This is a type of fabrication process which involves cutting along the length of a sheet metal using a chop-handle.
•  Stamping – Not unlike the punching process, stamping essentially calls for the sheet metal to be bent and formed into the desired shape using a die.
•  Welding – After undergoing various machining processes, fabricated steel products need to be assembled and, in some cases, may need to be permanently attached onto one another. This result is often obtained by carrying out a popular technique known as welding. Simply put, welding is the practice of joining any two pieces of metal together. Additionally, there are a range of techniques that are associated with welding but the most basic type of welded joint is a spot weld. Here, a filler material (in the molten state) is poured in between two metal components so that, after solidification, the end product is a singular piece. Alternatively, industrial glue can also be used to join two unlike components.