Metal Press Forming
From Midlake Products in Louisville, Ohio
Midlake Products offers metal press forming and braking from our manufacturing facility in Louisville, Ohio. Combining the best metal press equipment with years of expertise and craftsmanship, our team has the ability to custom manufacture anything from metal hinges to sheet metal for your next order to even the most exacting specifications. With our convenient location in the greater Canton / Akron area we are just over an hour from Cleveland and right around the corner from your location.
Midlake Products continues to invest in our metal forming department to offer increased forming capabilities. Our current braking and forming capabilities include:
- Four CNC Amada HDS and HFE type with precision ground tooling
- Up to 96″ long beds
- Up to 80 tons
- Six hydraulic and mechanical press brakes
- up to 120″ beds
- up to 100 tons
- Metal rolling up to 188″ thick stainless steel, mild steel and aluminum
More about metal forming
If you think about metal in the same way you might think about clay, you can picture metal forming in the same way that a potter might form clay into pots or other various shapes for a number of uses. Forming uses a number of tools to take a blank of metal into the form and shape that a customer can use for a particular purpose or application.
Raw material is provided from a primary process like casting, powder consolidation, early forming process or electric deposition. From the raw material, metals can be deformed much like soft clay or wax.
Solid state metals can be permanently changed in shape by forcing the displacement of relative positions between neighboring material points. External forces are applied to force these changes. To permanently form metals, specially constructed tooling is used, made from hard materials and often manipulated by very large machinery.
Forming processes can include:
- Bending
- Curling
- Decambering
- Deep drawing
- Incremental sheet forming
- Ironing
- Laser cutting
- Perforating
- Press brake forming
- Punching
- Roll forming
- Rolling
- Spinning
- Stamping
- Water Jet Cutting
- Wheeling
Press brake forming
Press brake forming is a form of bending, used for long and thin sheet metal parts. “Press brakes” bend the metal. A die is contained in the lower part of the press. This is a V shaped groove. The upper part of the press uses a punch to press the sheet metal down into the V shaped die which will cause the metal to bend. A general purpose machine can have a bending force of about 25 tons per yard of length.
Presses usually have a type of back gauge to position the depth of the bend along the work piece. This back gauge can be computer controlled. It allows the operator to make a series of bends, and it allows for a high degree of accuracy. Some machines control only the backstop, and more advanced machines control both the position and angle of the stop. Height is also controlled as is the position of the two reference pegs used to locate the material. The exact position and pressure can be recorded for each bending process, so the operator can achieve a perfect 90 degree bend.
Why choose Midlake?
Midlake Products is a custom manufacturer of products like metal hinges and sheet metal fabrication. At Midlake we use both CNC and manual presses as part of our metal press forming manufacturing in Louisville, Ohio.
Please call or contact us today for a free quote on your next order!
