They also have a tolerance in yield strength. The tensile strength ranges from 58 to 80 KSI. Your part tolerances always should be generous enough to allow you to create functional parts, considering all of the possible variables within the material.įor instance, the thickness tolerance for 16-ga. No two pieces of the same material type are the same over a wide range of material properties. Sheet metal tolerances vary greatly from piece to piece, sheet to sheet, and supplier to supplier.

However, precision air bending still must deal with variabilities in the material. The repeatability of the press brake’s stroke at a few microns is phenomenal, as is the precision of modern tooling, with tolerances often as close as 0.0008 in. Why does this happen, exactly, and how does this affect process repeatability?Ī: Predicting the inside bend radius should be a relatively simple task. You’ve described how a parabola forms during bending. Q: I am researching air bending on the press brake, and I have a question about predicting the inside bend radius. Although I might be slow to respond, please don’t hesitate to drop me a line. Thanks to you all for your questions and your patience. If you haven’t received an answer yet, know that one will be coming. The first covers a sheet metal application, and the second is a question on bump-bending thick 6061-T6 plate. They involve one question about bending sharp and two more about the bending of T6 aluminum. This month I continue to work through a backlog of emailed questions. Press brake guru Steve Benson covers the sharp bend’s parabola as well as strategies for bending high-temper aluminum.

Aluminum tube bend radius chart