Sheet metal manufacturing is widely used in electrical and electronic, automotive, telecommunications, medical and other industries. Sheet metal is the skeleton that supports and shapes products such as automobiles, computers or mobile phones. The design and manufacture of sheet metal parts is becoming a key stage of new product development, and has a trend of diversification and small batch production. The EP-M260 metal 3D printer can help simplify the process and reduce costs.

In the traditional sheet metal manufacturing process, stamping dies are used. Taking automobile sheet metal parts as an example, the forming process is carried out by punching, cutting die, forming die, split die, compression die, bending punch, etc. The tooling process for manufacturing new molds is expensive and time-consuming, and is not suitable for the rapid production of small batches of sheet metal parts.

When manufacturing sheet metal parts in small batches, many sheet metal factories use a combination of laser cutting and CNC bending technology. Compared with the traditional stamping and forming process, this process does not require tooling process, is economical, has a short cycle, and is suitable for the rapid production of simple structure sheets.

However, laser cutting can only be used for forming and opening holes, and bending can only be used for planar structures. This technology is not suitable for the production of specially shaped sheets with curved or uneven surfaces.

A car seat manufacturing company from China, specializing in the development, manufacturing and sales of car seats, has become the general contractor of Changan, Geely, Ford, Great Wall and other automobile manufacturers. They plan to launch a new car seat solution within a week, but the tools for core sheet metal parts are still in progress, so sheet metal parts cannot be produced.

The car seat set consists of 78 pieces and has a thickness of 1.5 to 2.5 mm. Most parts have ribs and protrusions. Therefore, it is impossible to form parts by laser cutting or CNC bending. There are also some corner areas that are restricted by CNC milling and cannot be completely restored to the original design made on the milling machine. By the way, milling itself is not a very effective process for making parts.

EPLUS 3D provides 3D printing solutions for sheet metal manufacturing. After data analysis, the EP-M260 system selects 316L stainless steel as the manufacturing material, and the surface is polished. In just 7 days, the company used three EPLUS 3D metal printer EP-M260 to deliver the manufactured complete seat plate parts, reproducing the original design.

In another use case, a machine manufacturer wants to produce a four-part muffler with a shell thickness of 0.73 mm and a medium structure area of ​​0.6 mm.

The sheet metal structure of the four muffler components is complex. It cannot be manufactured by cutting and bending. Due to its thin wall thickness, it cannot be manufactured by milling. Only two options are available. One is punching and the other is 3D printing.

Parts made with stamping tools have the characteristics of high precision and high restoration of the original design. However, this requires very long and expensive stamping tools in production. On the other hand, the metal 3D printing of parts only takes 3 days from data processing to product delivery, and the design details are fully reflected.

The customer chose EPLUS 3D as a partner to complete the task. EPLUS 3D EP-M260 prints metal plates with a dimensional accuracy of up to 0.1 mm. More and more cases show that 3D printing technology can provide high-quality parts, significantly reducing production costs and delivery time.

Sheet manufacturing is one of the fastest growing industries in the world. Obviously, flexible production in sheet metal manufacturing is a trend of increasing product diversity and small batch demand. More and more sheet metal processing companies are using additive manufacturing technology to create more value for customers, such as reducing assembly steps, increasing design freedom, and minimizing time and cost.

This market research by 3dpbm Research provides an in-depth analysis and forecast of the ceramic additive market.

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