what exactly is metal fabrication

If you want to know about the world of fabrication, Fast Engineers, Fastengineers and  Fabricators service , Fast Engineers then today’s blog can be helpful for you as today we are gonna talk about what metal fabrication exactly is and some of the various ways of doing metal fabrication.

So if we talk in a layman language, It is a manufacturing process used to shape metal into parts or end products by using various types of techniques. Fabricators then convert this sheet metal into products or tools and finally the resulting product gets cut, folded, or shaped to create the finished part.

WAYS OF DOING METAL FABRICATION

Forging

One of the various ways is to use hammer or die strikes to apply compressive force to shape metal - commonly known as the process of forging. This process can take place in both cold and hot temperatures and are respectively known as cold forging and warm forging. 

Extrusion

When the workpiece is forced through or around an open or closed die so that the diameter of the workpiece can get reduced to the cross-section of the die and when pressed around a die, a cavity can get formed within the workpiece - it is known as the process of extrusion The resulting cylindrical item product is often wiring or piping.

Just like forging, there are:

Cold extrusion - This extrusion is performed at room temperature which increases the strength of the part, making it stronger than the original material. When required force is applied to the appropriate metal, it starts to flow into the available shape, much like the movement of viscous liquid. This type of extrusion is usually used in steel metal fabrication.

Hot extrusion - On the contrary we have hot extrusion which are normally used for  copper fabrication and to create  custom aluminium parts.In this metal is put to heat at an increased temperature, to keep the metal from hardening and to make it easier to push through the die. 

Machining

The other metal fabrication method we have is called machining which involves the process of shaping metal by removing the unwanted material from it by using different machining processes, including drilling, turning, and milling.

The first one among the three is Drilling which uses a rotary cutting tool, the drill bit, to cut a hole in the material. 

Then we have Turning which uses a lathe to rotate the metal while a cutting tool (which can be angled differently to create different shapes) moves in a linear motion to remove metal along the diameter, creating a cylindrical shape.

The third one here is Milling which uses rotating multi-point cutting tools to progressively remove material from the workpiece until the desired shape is achieved. There are different types of milling including face milling, plain milling, angular milling, climb milling, and form milling.

Casting

The last way of doing metal fabrication we will talk about today is Casting in which the molten metal is poured in a mold or die and is allowed to cool and harden into the desired shape. There are several different types of casting including Die-casting, Permanent mold casting, semi-permanent mold castings, sand casting etc.