Good Aluminum Sheet For Bending

Bending is a delicate and demanding process most of the time and common fabricating processes require a degree of formability that make your choice of proper alloy critical.

Good aluminum sheet for bending.

Which aluminum alloy bends the best is a a common question customers want the answer to. Bending is one of the most common sheet metal fabrication operations. Bending is a manufacturing process that produces a v shape u shape or channel shape along a straight axis in ductile materials most commonly sheet metal. Bending sheet metal by hand is a manageable task if the piece of sheet metal is small and thin enough to handle.

Commonly used equipment include box and pan brakes brake presses and other specialized machine presses typical products that are made like this are boxes such as electrical enclosures and rectangular ductwork. Also known as press braking flanging die bending folding and edging this method is used to deform a material to an angular shape. Highly formable and one of the best kinds of aluminum to bend. The top 3 aluminum alloys for being are the 3003 which has medium strength and the best cold workability the 5052 which is the highest strength alloy of the more common non heat treatable grades and the 6061 which is one of the more.

Place the fracture line over the edge of a table and bend the overhang slightly downwards. The best aluminum alloys for bending come down to series 3xxx and series 5xxx and sometimes series 6xxx. 6061 t6 aluminum is tempered and notorious for not bending easily. The force must exceed the material s yield strength to achieve a plastic deformation.

From a bending perspective it s always best to bend these parts in an annealed state and then temper them to the correct condition. Miserable to bend cracking is very common and cold bending will always weaken the metal. In this post we ll explain it to you. Proper bending can be done with annealing the aluminum first although it s not an ideal candidate for formed parts.

We re having trouble bending 6061 t6 aluminum without cracking and i was wondering if you could give us a few pointers. This will give you a nice bend. In high purity forms aluminum is soft and ductile. With the aid of a straight edge and a sharp knife score both sides of the aluminium sheet.

This weakens the aluminium and creates a fracture line. Grain direction bend line should go across the grain for the best bend having said that a typical sharp 90 bend on a piece of 1 8 aluminum sheet should be a minimum 1 8 inside radius use either 3003 or 5052 ideally the bend line should go across the grain.