Industrial Design students: With any luck your programs occasionally tear you away from the 3D printers to educate you on traditional production methods. One thing I don’t see a lot of in ID student projects, and I look through a fair amount, is the use of sheet metal. So I thought it might be helpful to show you what some state-of-the-art sheet metal fabrication tools can do, to give you an idea for possibilities you can spec in your designs.
Companies like Germany-based UKB specialize in making all manner of press brake tools. To help designers and fabricators understand the capabilities, they’ve got a YouTube channel filled with 45-second clips featuring different brakes and results. Here’s a sample:
Radius Tool
Radius Embossing Tool
Adjustable Unibending Tool
U-Bending Tool with Overbending Function
Trapezoidal Tool
Z-Bending Tool
Fold and Flatten Tool
Louvre Tool
U-Bending Tool for Extra Thick (8mm / 5/16″) Material
Assymmetrical U-Bending Tool
If you’d rather not sit through videos, they’ve also got 2D representations that you can browse to see the different profiles possible:
The firm also makes custom tools, like the one you see in the GIF atop this entry.
You can learn more here.
Source: core77