Greetings from Central Europe
 

Dear All Metal Shaping members,

I am junior technical drafter in a construction company.
We mostly manufacture aluminium and steel constructions for buildings and facades.
The company I work for, recently bought sheet metal cutting bending machines. For a few of us, they look like some kind sacred objects, as up until now we ordered all flat/bend sheets from external suppliers. I work from Austria.

I am curious and looking forward to read and learn more bout sheet metal shaping from this knowledgeable community.
Maybe one day, I get to work in the production, on those "sacred" CNC/bending machines. I have started reading online some basics of sheet metal bending (Bend allowance calculation, k-factor). But still it is always useful when I can read about experiences of other users. And maybe get an answer to sheet-metal question, I would like to ask.

I graduated from 5 years technical high-school, a year ago.

In my free time, I enjoy swimming, water colour painting, and from time to time carpentry.

Thank you very much for the acceptance and for membership approval.

Kind regards,
Didier Bernard

Hi Didier, you've come to the right place. Colleagues and I can answer many of your questions. As for CNC bending machines... they can't do it yet. My motto is "Where 21st century technology ends, we begin". A 3D curve from sheed metal is an insoluble problem for a CNC machine. It will take a while....:)

Hi Jaroslav,

My apologies for taking me too long to answer.
And thank you very much for wishing me a welcome.

This sounds great! A T-short can be mode with that slogan.

Thank you once again Jaroslav for the welcome :)

Didier. I have that slogan in my official advertisement. It came about during negotiations about cooperation with a large company. They said I couldn't do it because I was alone..... After a few months they called and it didn't matter anymore.:D

Jaro, hate to say it but there is a machine that can make shapes now.

I know it Pugsy. I'm watching it carefully. It still requires a lot of investment and a team of people. Before a single piece is created, a lot of preparation is needed. Yes, the results are great. So far, the parts are limited in size. To assemble the parts into a whole, you need a human expert again. So far, I'm not afraid of machines.
I'm curious how they make 3mm stainless steel. We don't have a problem with that here and we shape them to the size we need.
So my motto still applies.:D