Chris Poole

Press brake forming is one of the most common operations in metal fabrication. It can involve bending 20-foot sections of heavy plate or making 0.25-inch flanges on a small piece of thin-gauge sheet metal. Everyone does it. Manual press brake operation can be effective for many of these bending...

Robots have had a longtime presence in precision sheet metal fab shops, but not so much in companies that worked with structural steel or heavy plate. That's changing, however, because today's automation holds great potential to change the dynamic of heavy fabrication work.