When it comes to manufacturing, efficiency is key to being successful. There are a lot of ways to be efficient and one of them is material utilization. With constant rising costs of material, it is very important to use as much material as possible to eliminate the amount of scrap. That’s why it is important for engineers to design parts that can easily fit or be nested within standard sheet sizes. Manufacturers will ultimately choose the proper sheet metal size to use based on the size of the part and the number of parts to be manufactured. Here is a list of standard sheet metal sizes: Continue reading
Category Archives: Engineering
Metal Manufacturing Language
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Just like in many industries, the metal manufacturing industry has its own jargon. Whether you are looking into working in the metal fabrication industry, or you are having metal parts manufactured, it’s good to become familiar with some of the manufacturing language. So lets get started! Continue reading
Types of Metal Finishes
Here at Vista Industrial Products, Inc. we fabricate metal parts for numerous industries that have a variety of finishing requirements. When many people think of metal finishing, they may only think of it as aesthetic finishes like paint and powder coat in order to make parts look good and to change the color. However, many times a finish is applied to metal products for the functionality, preservation, or texture of a product rather than just adding color. Below is a list of the various common types of metal finishes and their purpose: Continue reading
First Articles Explained
When a company submits a Request For Quote, we always ask if they require First Articles. In many instances, purchasing agents and engineers don’t know what it is and how we handle First Articles here at VIP. So this blog post will describe First Articles in more detail. Continue reading
Sheet Metal Drawing DON’Ts
We received a request from a reader that wanted us to touch base on two very common sheet metal drawing mistakes. So we have created this blog post to strictly focus on these issues. When it comes to mechanical engineering and actual sheet metal fabrication, there are a couple grey areas that engineers should know about if they have never fabricated sheet metal. One has to deal with flat patterns and the other is sheet metal bend deductions. Continue reading