Sheet Prototyping

Cutting and folding sheets may be the fastest way to put precision features on multiple planes. A sheet fabricated prototype can go from design to part in minutes and scale to massive production volumes. The pictures above show a robot arm end effector holding a motor and transmission, while the pictures below show a custom shipping box.

Don't take it from me, listen to the master, Dan Gelbart, in his series "Making Prototypes": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dS5kwdaNhZo

Materials

• Cardboard
• Paper
• Polypropylene
• Dibond
• Steel
• Stainless Steel
• Aluminum: Must be a formable series, like 1100 or 3003

Cutting Tools

• Laser cutters
• Waterjet
• ZUND

Creasing Methods

• Press Brake
• Finger Brake
• Vice Bending
• Perforating
• Half-cutting
• Bevel routing
• Bead creasing
• Roller

Closing seams

• welding
• spot welding
• rivets
• sheet metal inserts
• tabs and slots
• adhesives

Design Factors

• Thickness
• K-Factor
• Relief

Design tools

• Fusion 360 sheet metal:
  • tutorial (nyc cnc)
  • tutorial (cardboard)
  • sheet metal gems part 1
  • sheet metal gems part 2
• Rhinoceros 'UnrollSrf' Command to get patches
• Solidworks sheet metal
• 123D Make (deprecated...)
• ExactFlat