Which one First?

Should I make my bends first or cut out the center first?

It is easier to cut the part when it is flat. However, if your bends will be very close to your cut out, you may get unacceptable distortion due to the inability to adequately clamp the part. If you think that might be the case, it is easier to bend first and then hassle with cutting a more difficult to hold part. Do you know what alloy/temper you have? Trial bend a scrap first. Some alloys do not like to be bent very far before they crack.

jpmobius, does heat help much to prevent cracking with aluminum? I'm not much of a metal fabricator.

Brian

CrabsAndCylinders said:

jpmobius, does heat help much to prevent cracking with aluminum? I'm not much of a metal fabricator.

Click to expand...

Well, yes... and no. Some alloys (2000 and 7000 series) do not like to be formed at all, and heating them up like you would a piece of steel to bend it is no good. Bendable alloys are 3000, 5000 and 6000 series. You'd want a sheet of 3000 series for a car body for instance, where formability is more important than strength. Wrought (bars, plates, tubes) aluminum alloys are usually heat treated (tempered), and often bend very poorly. In this case you can anneal them for forming, but you will lose the strength afforded by the tempering. 1fasgsxr's plates likely are either 2024 or 6061 (just because those are common for plate). If it is 2024, it likely will not bend at all without severely cracking, and no amount of heating it up (save actually melting it) will help. If it is 6061, It very likely will have been tempered to the T6 condition (again, just because this is common), in which case it probably won't bend very far without cracking unless annealed and/or bent with very large radius bends. (you can see why I suggesting testing a scrap) So here, heating it up will help a lot because the temper can be removed. A simple, if not particularly sophisticated way to do that is like annealing steel: lay down a layer of soot with an acetylene torch, and then warm it up until the soot burns off. Allow the part to cool off slowly and bend away!

I bought this one with the bending in mind....5052 maybe?
Went back and looked..it's 5052

Thanks, jpmobius.

I'm looking forward to how you make out, 1fasgsxr

5052 is ideal.