Expertise: Sheet Metal

Sheet metal is often the most robust and cost-effective solution when any of the following are true:

• The product generates a lot of heat, so thin walls and high thermal conductivity are helpful.
• The device is larger than a textbook, so the tooling to make it from plastic would be very expensive.
• Annual volume are projected to be rather low, making it difficult to justify the Nonrecoverable Expense (NRE) of an injection mold tool.

Engineers spend decades learning “tricks of the trade” to join or reinforce sheet-metal.  Rules-of-thumb for sheet metal design are influenced by metallurgy and by physical scale.