Best Way To Cut Sheet Metal And Keep It Flatten

Cut metal with your circular saw.

Best way to cut sheet metal and keep it flatten.

Hot metal chips will fly everywhere. First choose a flat working area and place your sheet metal. Clamp the sheet metal in place on your work table to hold it in place while you work. Laser or waterjet may yield nicer edges but they are much more expensive to purchase and to run.

Keep it steady by putting a flat material like a plywood or other heavy objects to prevent it from moving as you cut. You can also do free hand cutting steel with plasma if you re steady without much trouble. Weston bye author the mechatronist column digital machinist magazine practitioner of the electromechanical arts. I m thinking water jet is the way to go but don t want to overspend for no reason.

Sheet metal has a smooth surface so it tends to slip away if you cut using a jigsaw. Place the metal on a hard surface to score it and on long pieces do the bending with the score place along a sharp edge of a bench and if necessary clamp the fixed piece with a long piece of flat wood to prevent buckling the metal while bending it back and forth. Align the snips with the line you want to cut with the upper blade of the tin snips touching the sheet metal. How to cut sheet metal with a jigsaw 1.

Using a chisel and hammer is the most basic form of cutting sheet metal. If you ve hit it hard enough the chisel will cut the sheet metal if it s thin enough. Tin snips are primarily used for cutting thin sheet metal like tin aluminum brass and thin gauge stainless steel. Put a nice matte finish on the piece but it wasn t flat anymore.

It may not be an obvious choice but fitted with the right blade a circular saw is a great metal cutting tool. Cold rolled steel is good enough in terms of flatness but i m worried about warping at the edges when cutting these pieces out using a guillotine or plasma laser cutter. Plasma is definitely one of the best ways to go if you re cutting shapes from plate. For cutting steel sheet and flat materials they are easy and fast.

Simply line up your chisel along the line you are going to cut and strike the back of it with a hammer. I hope this reads sensibly. Am i overthinking things. You can cut mild steel up to about 3 8 in.