Sheet metal manufacturing is a manufacturing process that involves taking thin, flat sheets of metal and transforming them into pre-programmed structures. Manufacturers use a variety of sheet metal design techniques to achieve this conversion, including stamping, punching, cutting, and bending. The various sheet metal design techniques used by sheet metal manufacturers ensure versatility while allowing for the production of a wide range of parts and products. This combined with the malleability of sheet metal demonstrates the vast amount of sheet metal design that manufacturers can undertake.
Sheet metal parts must be precise, durable, and able to withstand environmental factors. These characteristics are crucial for the end-use applications in some industries. Therefore, sheet metal is used for components in the automotive, aerospace, medical, and construction fields.
Due to the efficiency, stable quality, low cost, and ability to produce complex products, sheet metal manufacturing is widely used in mechanical equipment, vehicles, airports, light industry, motors, household appliances, electronic products, and daily necessities. According to surveys, sheet metal parts account for 60% to 70% of the automotive industry; sheet metal parts for aircraft account for more than 40% of the total number of parts; sheet metal parts for electromechanical engineering and instrumentation account for 60% to 70% of the total number of produced parts; and sheet metal parts for electronic equipment account for more than 85% of the total number of components. Sheet metal parts for daily necessities sold in the market account for more than 90% of the total metal manufacturing.
With the development of technology and manufacturing, a large number of new technologies such as computer-aided design (CAD), computer-aided manufacturing (CAM), computer-aided engineering (CAE), and many new machine tools for numerical control cutting, forming, and welding (such as fiber laser cutting machines, plasma cutting machines, water jet cutting machines, numerical control machine tool rotary press machines, numerical control machine tool sheet metal bending machines, welding robots, etc.) are widely used in various fields.
Currently, sheet metal manufacturing is moving towards fast, fully automated, precise, and stable development. Various rapid stamping machines and flexible manufacturing systems (FMS) with automatic production, transportation, and feeding functions for sheet metal manufacturing, as well as various numerical control machine tool stamping presses for sheet metal manufacturing, are being developed and trending. It can be anticipated that the strength of sheet metal fabrication technology may further rise, and the main use of prefabricated sheet metal components may become increasingly widespread, with the total number of applications increasing over time.