Bending Stainless Steel Sheet

Bending is one of the most common sheet metal fabrication operations.

Bending stainless steel sheet.

For most applications with stainless steel or aluminum you can get away with a zero radius bend on anything under 0 050 thick. This is done through the application of force on a workpiece. It just won t really. Stainless steel 1 14 ga.

3 the percentage of elongation of stainless steel plate is lower than the carbon steel the bending angle of the workpiece r is larger than that of carbon steel or there is the possibility of cracks. Make your own sheet metal break. As you bend a stainless steel sheet the bend area cold hardens increasing the amount of pressure required to finish the bend. 2 the stainless steel sheet has a strong rebound tendency compared with carbon steel when bending.

Bending of stainless steel. The bend radius you select may not be available if the geometry of the part will not allow us to bend with the specific tooling required to achieve that radius. Bending sheet metal by hand is a manageable task if the piece of sheet metal is small and thin enough to handle. Equally equipment capacity will be much lower than for carbon steels.

In other words if you re bending 1 8 sheet use a tool with a 1 8 radius to form the inside of the bend. If you re bending 0 020 thick material use a 0 020 radius. Also known as press braking flanging die bending folding and edging this method is used to deform a material to an angular shape. Mild steel 2 12 ga.

Mild steel 1 16 ga. This makes bending stainless steel with common hand tools difficult and a sheet metal brake is often required. Material bend radii and minimum bend size charts. Like many other fabrication methods for stainless steel bending can be done using the same equipment used to bend other metals.

The force must exceed the material s yield strength to achieve a plastic deformation. A difference is that working hardening rates may mean a need for more rigid equipment and higher power levels. Most frequently expensive sheet metal bending tools called brakes are used to bend sheet metal but you can also complete this task without one.