Metal fabricating refers to the art of adjusting and prototyping product features after a certain manufactured component has already entered production. Metal fabrication is deemed to offer a much higher degree of flexibility as well as more agility.
Key Benefits of Metal Fabrication
The process of metal fabrication includes a wide range of production techniques in order to create value-added metal components. These metal components can be customized to specific customer requirements; higher flexibility due to its ability to rapidly implement design changes for a specific component part with very obvious cost benefits; reduce lead times from the stage of designing the product to production; variety of very efficient and effective techniques in cutting raw sheet materials to the right size including auto-feed saws and laser cutting.
There are also other advantages of metal fabrication. Some of these come from automatic lathes, palletized production feed systems, CNC machining centers as well as advances in machine tooling which allows for more exacting surfaces as well as efficient production of high tolerances and pressed, stamped, machined and formed parts assembly which is typically accompanied by a quality check for alignment and accuracy with robotic welding and semi-automated welding processes providing for a much higher degree of accuracy and consistency.
There are also disadvantages with metal fabrication. The primary disadvantage seen in this kind of process is higher labor intensive process which results in higher cost in every unit; challenges in repeatability and consistency compared to a proven stamping die; deep drawn parts which are not usually viable with the metal fabrication techniques; slower rate of production compared to metal pressing and stamping and higher cost of materials. If you can identify a multi-level supplier which can provide in-house support for a very wide range of secondary operations including thread rolling, forming, machining, welding, tapping and assembly will reduce the production lead times as well as overall costs.
Metal Pressing and Stamping
Metal stamping is used widely in Australia in creating a wide range of components. Stamping or pressing involves a very efficient and cost effective means for medium to high volume production runs for different parts in order to reduce costs and increase incorporating secondary operations which produce unique product designs.
The key benefits when it comes to metal stamping and pressing is accuracy, speed as well as cost-efficiency in manufacturing certain complex products in medium to high volume of products. There is also an increased efficiency when you use highly automated coil-fed presses as well as in incorporating secondary operations within the press and die. The process enables you to allow value added operations like automatic stud or nut insertion, in-die welding and assembly, in-die tapping, enabling complex products as well as innovative designs to be created with repeatability and close tolerances which cannot be possibly done with fabrication techniques. The process of metal pressing and stamping also lowers the cost of metal as it is purchased in coil stock instead of sheet steel thereby less scrap is produced in the actual process of producing the material.
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