Best Practices for Cutting Sheet Metal Fabrication Cost
In any business, cutting costs is essential to maintaining a healthy bottom line. For sheet metal fabricators, there are a number of ways to cut costs and still produce a high-quality product.
By adopting some best practices, sheet metal fabricators can reduce their costs while still delivering a top-quality product.
The following advice will assist in lowering your project’s overall cost.
Select Quality Raw Materials
Choosing the appropriate raw materials for your project will enable you to cut costs because the price of raw materials has an impact on the price of sheet metal fabrication.
The best options in this situation typically involve stock sizes of materials. For prototypes, you should also use the cheapest materials.
You can also negotiate material pricing with fabricators that purchase mill-direct. Because of their relationship and expertise with such mills, you may take advantage of lower bulk prices.
Purchasing materials from the mill also implies that they can offer affordable shipping and storage options.
Employ a Standard Sheet Metal Gauge
Make sure to utilize standard sheet gauges and sizes in your design, if at all possible. These common sheet sizes are frequently less expensive than sheets with particular lengths.
It could be difficult to achieve bends and cuts for your item with thicker materials.
It will be better to choose material grades depending on current market conditions and have your design to a common gauge. This will enable you to cut back on variable gauge costs.
Steer Clear of Intricate Design Elements
As was previously mentioned, the cost of your design tends to increase with its complexity. The cost of parts that need numerous cuts, bends, and welds will increase. Specialized design features may look amazing, but their cost is greatly increased.
In most cases, it’s best to strive towards simplicity. To reduce your manufacturing expenses, you could design simpler angle bends. Such bends should have interior radii that are 1x the thickness of the material you have chosen.
On large, thick components, using minor bends is frequently erroneous. So you should strive to stay away from them. Another way to reduce the cost of fabrication is to maintain a consistent bend radius.
Think about Inexpensive Finishing Options
Your choice of sheet metal finishing is frequently influenced by a number of elements, such as the part’s applications and aesthetic considerations. For example, using pre-plated metals will be sufficient if your part is being used in a hostile environment.
However, if you need a welded seam, pre-plated metals like galvanised metals are not the ideal option. Consider holding off on adding finishing touches like engraving and silkscreening until the very end of the product development process.
Some materials are naturally resistant to corrosion. Consequently, they don’t require a very specialised finish.
Specialised finishes might also necessitate cost estimators obtaining outside estimates, which would increase costs and lead times.
Conclusion
Speak with a qualified fabricator. A full-service fabricator is the greatest option if you want affordable sheet metal fabrication. You ought to pick a fabrication firm that can handle the majority of the work on its own.
When developing sheet metal components, there are a number of aspects to take into account, one of which is the fabrication costs. The advice above will enable you to lower the sheet metal production price significantly.
CSM Fabrication Welding offers top-quality sheet metal fabrication in Perth. We specialise in fabricating sheet metal out of various materials, including mild steel, aluminium, and stainless steel. Check out our services today!