Sheet metal design

AJC Design Engineering by Andrew Coleman designs a wide variety of sheet metal parts for products and machines. I have many years experience of designing sheet metal parts and this is still what I spend the majority of my time working on.

The parts are designed in 3D CAD using a sheet metal module within SolidWorks. The parts can then be automatically 'unfolded' and applied to a 2D CAD engineering drawing. The unfolding process within the SolidWorks sheet metal module automatically calculates the bending allowance. The 2D CAD drawing can then be exported (usually by DXF) to the manufacturing site.

Parts are usually within the thickness range 0,8 > 5,0mm. The materials are typically mild steel, stainless steel, aluminium or galvanised steel. Parts can be designed for assembly by pop rivet, welding and slot/hook systems.