Wednesday, 15 July 2015

Creating the Right Prototype Drawing

Metal working would not exist without metal sheets. While most people relate metal sheets with aluminium, there are some metal sheets that are made of titanium, copper, nickel, steel, and even gold. Its primary use is in car bodies although, in some cases, metal sheets have also been used in medical tables. Because of the variety of usage of metal sheets, it comes as no surprise that more than a thousand firms make a living out of it.

One such industry that makes use of metal sheets, albeit indirectly, is the metal fabrication. However, before a metal sheet can be fabricated, fabrication drawings have to be prepared first. Now, these drawings are as important as the fabricated metals themselves in that it allows the other parties involved in the creation of the fabricated metal to have an understanding of what the finished product should be like.

When creating fabrication drawings, you would need to take into consideration what the clearance and tolerance values have to be. Keep in mind that different machines usually have varying minimum clearance values. Your metal fabricator would need to know this as it could affect the overall expenses.

Now, not all of the dimensions of the finished product would need to be indicated in the drawings; however, you need to make sure that required dimensions are indicated in the report that you would be giving to the fabricator. Keep in mind that these dimensions would have an impact on the tolerances so it should be something that you have gone over a number of times.

Lastly, make sure that the drawings are concise but not repetitious. Repeated notations in your drawings might work against you as it could only cause confusion with the fabricator. If there are typical dimensions, mention this once and just indicate that it is the same dimension for the other parts.

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