Sheet metal and plate meet the mill and lathe

Walk into most custom fabricators and you’ll see at least one vertical mill, or perhaps a machining department to support the larger sheet metal fabrication operation. How much machining a fab shop does depends a lot on a shop’s history.

If job shop launched primarily as a stamper decades ago and then shifted toward fabrication, the company needed a few mills and lathes in-house to maintain tools, a practice that likely continues today. These operations usually have far more machining capability than a shop that launched in the 1960s and 1970s, when fabrication equipment with “flex tooling” was gaining serious traction. (It was no coincidence The FABRICATOR magazine launched in 1971.)

But exceptions abound. Our cover story in October, in fact, described a relatively young custom fabrication operation, launched in the 1990s, that also happens to offer comprehensive machining services.

I’ve been talking with various fab shop owners about how they manage their machining operations. Some produce parts exclusively for sheet metal assemblies in the shop. Some use their machining capability for custom tooling. Some sell machining-exclusive parts directly to customers. The strategies vary widely, and we’ll be covering them in an upcoming edition of The FABRICATOR.

Although the strategies are different, I’ve noticed the common thread of 3-D software. These days operators at a modern brake see a 3-D representation of the part being formed. Machinists operating a mill or turning center also see a 3-D representation of the job in CAM. Some shops are bringing offline programming even to the robot cell, so now welding operators see a 3-D representation of the welding sequence.

Years ago you’d visit a shop and see flat 2-D prints everywhere. Brake technicians developed the flat layout. Today, you see more 3-D representations of the part being made. The craft of sheet metal fabrication and machining still are completely different animals. But the nature of 3-D software perhaps has at least brought these disparate crafts just a little closer together.