Eng-Tips is the largest engineering community on the Internet

Intelligent Work Forums for Engineering Professionals

  • Congratulations waross on being selected by the Eng-Tips community for having the most helpful posts in the forums last week. Way to Go!

Sheet metal finishing standards

Status
Not open for further replies.

rmore

Electrical
Feb 4, 2011
35
US
Are there national quality standards that cover sheet metal fabrication and finishing?
 
Replies continue below

Recommended for you

I am interested in machinery and appliance enclosures, shrouds, etc. We are attempting to come up with a spec for our quality department to use to judge the quality of finished sheet metal cabinet parts from our supplier.
 
Start by asking your suppliers what specs they are working to.
But in general no, for run of the mill sheet product there is no surface finish standard other than just showing 'acceptable workmanship'.
If you are looking for something else there are ASTM standards addressing surface condition of cold rolled products. A506 covers steels and A480 stainless, but they say little about surface condition.
There are specs for automotive and appliance applications that are very specific, but those are often proprietary specs.

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
P.E. Metallurgy, Plymouth Tube
 
Unfortunately, our supplier looks at us with a blank stare when we ask about their quality specs. We had something similar to "Acceptable Workmanship" as a requirement, but there's a definite difference of opinion between our QC guys opinion of what that is and everyone else's. So we need to put down on paper what acceptable workmanship looks like so we can give it to both our supplier and our QC department.
 
Rmore:
Maybe you need a new supplier if they don’t have a reasonable QC dept. or set of stds. Have your QC dept. pick a bunch of boxes, and the like, which you have been getting, and really go over them with a fine-toothed comb, for any problems. List these and see if they don’t fit into a number of similar type problem groups. Then, define those issues and your limits of acceptability. That groupings list might include nice tight fitted joints and corners, square, not buckled all over the place, etc.; waterproof or not; no sharp edges so people can’t be cut on them every time they work on the box; properly located and sized internal bracketry and mounting surfaces, and stiffeners on large flat surfaces; limits on size and depth of spot welding markings. Everything you’ve had trouble with over the years on these types of boxes starts out on the basic listing. Is that problem your fault or theirs? All of these things need finer, measurable definitions which anyone can see and measure, without too much arguement. As for sharp edges cutting people, you get to drag their fingers along and over the edges for proof of satisfactory quality. Some Tech. Ed. Sheet Metal text books probably have a QC chapter which might be worth your reading. I suspect that some of the electrical component manufacturer’s groups have some basic stds. lists and limits.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Part and Inventory Search

Sponsor

Back
Top