Small stainless steel sheet metal bracket
This little 0.9mm thick 304 stainless steel lever is typical of the smaller "tricky" sheet metal brackets we are often asked to manufacture by our customers. We were very lucky in having a 3D SAT file from our customer directly from their 3D CAD software which we could then read in our Radan software. Having this data gave us the ability to produce a quick developed flat blank for CNC punch press programming and a good reference point for inspection. With a few design changes agreed with the customer to make the part suitable for manufacturing, we could CNC punch and CNC bend the sheet metal part on our Trumpf machines. In this case the order was only for 2 samples with a view to production later in the year. CNC punching and CNC bending are ideally suited to this type of smaller batch production. If this part is run in a 100′s or a few 1000′s then these methods would still be viable. When the quantities start to get into batches of several thousand at a time we suggest moving the part over to power press tooling, which we can produce in our press shop.