How To Straighten Sheet Metal

When straightening pipes fabricators sometimes fill the pipes with fine grained sand and close the ends of the pipes.

How to straighten sheet metal. My latest acquisition has some bent and wrinkled sheet metal especially the grille. Body files are usually used after another age old process has been used to straighten. If you do inadvertently bend a piece of aluminum don t assume it is ruined and throw it away. Other tools used to straighten metal include tongs vices and clamps which hold the metal in place so the fabricator can move a part of the metal until it straightens.

They impart predictable and continuous curves to sheet metal. Slip rolls can also be set to put several different curvatures in the same panel and to flatten distorted metal. This is really easy especially with a flattening tool. Put simply an experienced practitioner can apply heat in specific areas to straighten load bearing steel whilst still in place without adversely affecting its natural properties.

But they do remove metal making the panel thin in places and therefore affecting its strength and structure. Bending sheet metal by hand is a manageable task if the piece of sheet metal is small and thin enough to handle. This means it s a lot easier to flatten. Heat straightening is the art of strategically applying heat to sections of a piece of steel that has been bent out of shape.

The reason for this is that metal tends to stretch when it is bent. I was thinking of banging on it with a dead blow mallet but something tells me i d only thin and stretch the metal out like a pie crust. You have a few options. However it will deform the sides of the metal.

The process of straightening metal is one that while seeming easy is actually a fairly difficult thing to do correctly. The metal in the included picture looks relatively small. With the right tools you can easily straighten aluminum yourself rather than spending money on a new piece of metal. Aluminum is highly malleable which makes it easy to work with but also easy to accidentally bend.

In order to counteract this stretch you have to be able to shrink the metal back to its original position. Most frequently expensive sheet metal bending tools called brakes are used to bend sheet metal but you can also complete this task without one.