Sheet metal stamping: the importance of prototyping and low volume series

How to choose a sheet metal working company to build a tailored metal prototype.

The sheet metal stamping industry is changing rapidly in the last years.

Today, even more customers ask for more tailored metal parts in small series. 

Obviously, the phenomenon of this new demanding market requires a specific know-how, new technologies and more sophisticated methods.

For these reasons, the sheet metal stamping industry has had to adapt in order to offer what is called prototyping.

Prototyping is necessary where the customer’s need is a specific component that perfectly fits in a more complex plant, product or that work alone, never realized before.

In this phase, the sheet metal company plays a strategic role. In fact, often the customer doesn’t know how this component has to be. He has just an idea. The feasibility study, the tests and the engineering studies belong of who manufactures sheet metal. 

Once prototype is ready, the following step is to produce it in small series. 

Prototyping and small series productions influence the costs of realization and manufacture. Prototyping in the sheet metal stamping industry is extremely expensive because producing not standardized geometries require completed tailored operations.

For this reason, the right choice is to find a sheet metal company focused on cost efficient methods, flexible and equipped with the right technologies. 

Minifaber offer a service of co-design and co-engineering. Its engineers and technical figures analyze the customer’s needs, exchanging their experience in raw material and production process, supporting the customers to find out the best solution from a technical and economic point of view. 

Minifaber makes simulations of raw material to see how it behaves during the production process (for example during deep drawing) and cooperates with Politecnico of Milan – a Technical University- to research and let test new materials