Sheet Metal Box Layout

Layout line on your sheet metal to designate where you will be cutting and bending.

Sheet metal box layout.

When bending with large returns there are a few tricks outside of just tooling selection. With the patterns on the following pages and your sheet metal in hand it s time to lay out the project. By adding cutouts for ports switches ventilation or mounting these versatile and cost effective enclosures can be used in applications ranging from electronics to robotics. Box bending can be rather tricky with sheet metal because of the geometry of a press brake.

To make things easy for my students i designed our classroom box so it would be able to work on the size of a standard 8 5 x 11 piece of paper. For shop projects like these 22 gauge steel is about right. You will be bending the four sides up to make the walls so measure out equal lines parallel to the edges. Using the gopro hero3 making videos for education.

Enjoy the videos and music you love upload original content and share it all with friends family and the world on youtube. These lines will mark where the walls are bent. The box i have my students create in class ends up being 5 5 x 2 x 3 5. Sheet metal boxes are two part enclosures made by cutting metal sheets and then bending the resulting parts using a press brake to form a box.

Use the corner notcher to cut out any right angles. Typically the upper beam or punch holder will get in the way of very deep boxes. Then all you need to do is cut out the pattern make the bends and spray on a coat of paint. The patterns for a cardboard box will look very similar to what you need to plan out for the sheet metal box.

It s easy to cut and bend but still has plenty of strength.