Dream it.

Prototype sheet metal parts start from hand sketches, detailed prints and CAD models that require 1st article inspection. We take it all and turn your idea into physical precision sheet metal parts. We understand how important it is to hit that deadline and we are committed to supporting your journey from design to parts. We are sheet meta prototyping experts who get it.

Build it.

30+ years of experience, 25,000+ sq. feet of precision sheet metal manufacturing space, state-of-the-art processes & equipment. From quoting to programming to punching, forming, hardware insertion, welding, finishing, and inspection. We treat every job with a sense of urgency because we know that you are in a race to get to market first.

We don’t just get it. We get it done.

Scale it.

We WILL excel at fabricating your prototype sheet metal parts. When you are ready to scale to low volume production we are here to get to work for you. We have equipment that is dedicated to running larger volume jobs, this means that we have the capacity to meet prototyping and production sheet metal requirements simultaneously. Sheet metal fabricated parts made in China, and damn proud of it.

From rails for industrial equipment to automotive applications to bold artistic sculptures and architectural designs, there are plenty of reasons you may want to create curved aluminum extrusions.

While the ductility of aluminum makes it well-suited to bending for these applications, you must address several challenges to ensure your final product meets quality specifications. This decision-making process ultimately comes down to managing stresses during bending.

Bending aluminum extrusions imparts immense stress onto the workpiece. The extrusion can experience tension, compression, and torsion all at once. The results can range from minor thinning and swelling of profile segments to unacceptable defects like deformed profiles, buckling, or cracking.

This article explains some of the best practices extrusion designers can apply to ensure good bendability in their products, along with six popular methods for bending aluminum extrusions.

Design Considerations for Aluminum Extrusion Bending

Designers that want to bend aluminum extrusions have a lot to consider. While some bending methods can achieve a tighter bend radius and others can better ensure profile stability, a few key considerations can help you improve your product’s bendability for any bending method.

Choice of Material

First, the material you choose has a major impact on bendability. As we’ve discussed in previous articles, some alloys are better suited to bending than others. While not the easiest to bend, alloys from the 6XXX series tend to see widespread application thanks to their exceptional combination of properties.

Bending Before Temper Treatment

The physical properties of an alloy can also be improved using temper treatments, but applying them before bending can make bending an aluminum extrusion more difficult and more expensive to produce. The simple workaround is to conduct the full or partial temper treatment after bending so that your product is cheaper to produce and better meets specifications.

Profile Design Choices

Other considerations for improving the quality of curved aluminum extrusions and lowering production costs can include:

Improving profile geometry,
Designing uniform wall thickness, and
Minimizing the profile size when possible.
Especially with profile shape, poor design can lead to distortion of the profile and cracking during bending. Rounded corners, profile symmetry, and good internal supports can all help improve stability during bending.

Perform Surface Finishing Operations After Bending

Finally, if an extrusion bend design requires surface finishing, such as anodizing, or other secondary operations, it may be best to perform these operations after bending. While some surface finishes, like powder coating, may be capable of tolerating limited bending, there is always a risk that the bending process damages the surface.

While applying the considerations above can improve bendability and lower cost, they may not be possible depending on the restrictions of the design. Luckily, you still have options. If you have a difficult-to-bend aluminum extrusion, you can consult an experienced bending specialist to determine what additional measures you can take to meet your bending needs or if special equipment is needed.

How to Bend Extruded Aluminum: 6 Methods

There are several common ways to bend extruded aluminum which can be categorized into six main methods.

1) Roller Bending

As one of the most widely used methods for bending long aluminum extrusions, three-roller bending offers minimal tooling costs for common profiles and can roll fully circular components. While a key benefit of roller bending is that you can bend the entire extrusion length instead of only a single segment at a time, rolling for tighter bends may need to be done in increments to reduce the bend radius down to the desired curvature gradually.

The consequences of this stepwise rolling can include lower precision than other methods and poor scalability. These restrictions typically make roller bending better suited to low-to-medium size production runs and ideal for prototyping.

2) Ram Bending

Also known as push bending, this method is sometimes considered the simplest and least expensive approach, making it comparable to compression bending. While it can reliably bend extrusions to precise angles, ram bending is more likely than most other methods to deform the profile in undesirable ways and can only bend one portion at a time.

3) Rotary Draw Bending

Rotary draw bending involves clamping an extrusion and pulling it around a rotating bending die. While capable of bending to exceptionally precise angles, rotary draw bending can only bend a single segment at a time.

Rotary draw bending also boasts the ability to handle larger-sized extrusion profiles and multiple, close-proximity bends in a single part. It is an ideal method for custom bending profiles on round tubing, which can be supported by an internal mandrel to provide extra support for the profile during the bending.

4) Compression Bending

While the basic setup looks similar to rotary draw bending, the process is less complicated. Instead of a rotating die pulling the extrusion around its perimeter, compression bending uses a compression die to wrap the extrusion around the fixed bending die.

Like rotary draw bending, you can bend only one section at a time and make multiple bends in any direction. However, this method offers the aluminum profile much less support and can easily result in deformation. The main advantage of compression bending is for high production volumes as it is fast and cost-effective to complete each bend.

5) Stretch Bending

Sometimes called tensile bending, stretch bending can be one of the more expensive bending solutions thanks to bending die costs, but it offers unique benefits. The bending specialist can achieve the desired bending shape with minimal distortion or surface damage by placing the workpiece in constant tension during bending.

While limited to larger bend radii, the bending die for this specialty method can achieve a range of dynamic shapes on very large workpieces. Larger production volumes using the same profile can help offset the cost impact of a stretch bending die.

6) Free-Form Bending

As one of the most advanced methods on this list, CNC free-form bending feeds the aluminum extrusion through an articulating ceramic die to form a wide range of complex custom bends. While most common for round tubing, this technique can form other extrusion profiles into unique products. This technology is less common than the other bending methods but may see significant potential in the near future.

Which Method is Best for Your Product?

Each bending method has unique advantages that make it better suited to specific applications. While ram bending and compression bending offer low-cost options for bending aluminum extrusions, they can negatively impact aesthetics and sturdiness. On the other hand, stretch bending and rotary draw bending can produce high quality, high precision bends, but at higher costs and with other potential drawbacks.

Overall, even with the best bending method for your product, consistently meeting quality requirements for challenging extrusion profiles may prove extremely difficult. To help with this, consult our Mulan service professional to get expert insight into designing and bending extruded aluminum products.

Get the best value out of your next aluminum extrusion project by partnering with Mulan. Our Custom Aluminum Extrusion Services will help you meet your project requirements while keeping production costs low.

 

Aluminum machining refers to daily necessities and industrial products obtained through a series of processing and packaging processes with aluminum alloy as the main raw material.

First of all, before we understand the processing of aluminum products, let’s first understand the advantages and characteristics of aluminum.

1. Low Density. The density of aluminum is about 2.7 g/cm³. Its density is less than iron or copper.
2. High Plasticity. Aluminum with good ductility and various products can be made by pressure processing methods such as extrusion and stretching.
3. Corrosion Resistance. Aluminum has much better corrosion resistance than steel, which is a highly negatively charged metal. Under natural conditions or anodizing, an oxide protective film will form on the surface of aluminum, which has better corrosion resistance than steel.
4. Easy to Bend and Form. Pure aluminum can be increased in strength by anodizing.
5. Easy Surface Treatment. Surface treatments can further enhance or alter the surface properties of aluminum. The aluminum anodizing process is widely used in the machining of aluminum products.
6. Good Conductivity, easy to recycle.

Features Of Custom Aluminum Parts

1. Because the aluminum material is soft, the processing equipment and CNC lathe tool wear are small.
2. Can be processed into various geometric shapes, such as plane, cavity, shell, sphere, arc, etc.
3. The custom Aluminum Parts are easy to maintain and clean.
4. Treated china cnc machined aluminum parts are resistant to corrosion and will last longer.
5. Aluminum is environmentally friendly and has a high recycling value.

The above five points are the material characteristics of precision aluminum parts. Aluminum is a common material in CNC processing, because of its lightweight, easy corrosion, and low material cost. It is the preferred material for most aluminum turning parts manufacturers and customers.

 

Process Characteristics Of Custom Aluminum Parts

1. There are More Steps for Drilling and Tapping

Communication small aluminum parts machining needs to install various electronic components, so there are many holes in the small custom aluminum parts, and drilling and tapping account for a large proportion.

2. The same workpiece needs to be processed with multiple faces and multiple processes, which requires high efficiency.

Milling aluminum alloy parts generally have multiple surfaces processed by multiple processes, and some aluminum alloy parts need to be processed on all 6 surfaces. When the workpiece is not well arranged, the frequency of repeated assembly and disassembly is high.

3. High material removal rate and high precision requirements

Due to the requirements of miniaturization, lightweight, and high precision of cnc precision machined parts, general parts are directly processed from a whole piece of custom aluminum parts, and the material removal rate is high, and some parts even reach a removal rate of more than 95%. At the same time, there are many shapes such as thin walls and small cylinders, which require very high precision.

The Requirement For CNC Machine Tools And CNC Systems For Custom Aluminum Parts

Aiming at the process difficulties such as high cutting removal rate of China CNC aluminum parts with complex precision structural, easy deformation in thin-walled and deep cavity machining, and complicated processes with frequent clamping of six-sided features.

Numerical control machining technology has changed fundamentally, putting forward new requirements for numerical control machine tools and numerical control systems, numerical control machine tools from the traditional low speed, large torque cutting to high speed, high feed, light load cutting, efficient five-axis linkage direction development.

Therefore, high acceleration (>1G), high-speed and high-precision control, RTCP control of multi-axis virtual axes, full-closed-loop control of synchronous axes (horizontal/vertical), master-slave anti-backlash control, high-power servo drive, high-speed spindle control, etc. have become CNC Required technology for the system.

What Are The Advantages Of CNC Aluminum Parts Machining In Batches?

Custom aluminum parts machining is the use of CNC automatic lathes to process and process materials. It is the main processing method for customized machining parts in the manufacturing industry. Because of its fast processing speed, high precision, and convenient processing technology, it is used by most industrial enterprises.

 

The main advantages of a CNC machining center for batch processing of aluminum parts are as follows.

1. The maximum machining accuracy of the CNC machining center can reach ±0.01mm, the size is accurate, and the error is small.
2. The processing speed is fast, precision parts can be processed in batches, and the fastest one-day delivery.
3. The processing technology is convenient; the CNC machining center can complete multiple processing at one time, avoiding complex processes such as multiple clamping.
4. Surface treatment; some precision parts have high requirements for surface finish, and CNC machining centers ensure the finish of the product surface.

Special manual craftsmanship; according to the product use environment, special crafts such as polishing, oxidation, painting, laser engraving, silk screen printing, and powder spraying are used for processing to prolong the service life of the parts.

Conclusion

At present, all walks of life are developing rapidly, the market demand for precision-machined components is also increasing, the shape and structure of products are becoming more and more complex, and aluminum die casting parts are applicable to more and more industries.

Then, quality control has become the first consideration for CNC processing manufacturers. Regarding quality control, Mulan-mfg does this.

The first is the choice of raw materials

According to the 3D drawings, samples, and requirements provided by customers, Mulan-mfg chooses the most suitable aluminum alloy materials for processing. We all know that different materials have different properties, in order to ensure the functionality of aluminum fabrication parts, our company has a set of strict rules and regulations for the procurement of raw materials, which we follow is to purchase raw materials must be 100% meet customer requirements.

The second is a processing technology

As an aluminum cnc machining parts factory, when processing aluminum parts for customers, we use the advanced CNC machining center in the machining industry for processing. The aluminum parts processed by numerical control lathe can achieve the purpose of small error, high precision, and fast product forming speed. After the aluminum parts are processed, our technicians will polish and polish them to make the surface of the precision processed aluminum parts shinier, more beautiful, and more corrosion resistant.

Mulan-mfg has been in the machining industry for 18 years. It has nearly 40 advanced CNC machining centers It has a professional technical team and a pre-sales and after-sales service system. Provide customers with one-stop processing services.

What Is CNC Milling?

With computer numerical control (CNC), the process of machining parts for a variety of products and equipment types changed. Now, industries can expect improved precision and decreased imperfections when outsourcing their machining operations, including for milling. Through CNC milling, which is similar to CNC drilling, machinists can cut material on up to five axes, producing shapes that were previously unattainable through traditional manual methods.

Parts We Machine That Require Precision CNC Milling:

 

How Does CNC Milling Work?

Today, CNC milling machines are available in vertical and horizontal models, which feature different operations and components, as well as a few similar pieces of hardware:

• Cutter: Shapes the product.
• Spindle: Rotates the chuck across multiple axes.
• Chuck: Locks your material in place for machining.
• Interface: Reads computer-aided design (CAD) or computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) files and controls the milling machine with operator input.

Operations of CNC milling centers will adhere to a few core steps, including:

1.Input CAD or CAM document
2.Install machining material and appropriate cutter
3.Launch milling operation via the interface
4.Inspect product quality post-machining
While shaping a material into a product, the spindle will move across the Z, Y and X axes. A five-axis milling center will cross other axes.

Advantages of CNC Milling

Like other types of computer numerical controls for machining applications, CNC milling offers several benefits, including:

Accuracy: Whether you’re producing an initial prototype or final product, you can trust the item will match the measurements dictated in your CAD or CAM file. That level of precision gives you several advantages, including improved productivity and lowered material waste. It also maximizes your costs for machining the hardware.
Versatility: The availability of vertical and horizontal CNC milling machines, as well as CNC milling centers in multiple axes, offers excellent versatility. As a result, they can handle projects with varying complexities and parameters with precision. Many milling machines also feature essential accessories, such as through-spindle coolant.
Reproducibility: No matter how you’re applying CNC, whether for turning, lathing or drilling, you can count on the machines to produce your product per your CAD or CAM file every time. That leads to benefits similar to those offered by the accuracy of CNC milling centers, such as decreased waste and increased efficiency.
Many milling machines also utilize a control display that’s intuitive, which means faster adoption rates and fewer learning curves.

Applications of CNC Milling Machines
Due to their versatility, CNC milling machines produce several items, including:

• Prototypes
• Ball joints
• Brackets
• Rollers
• Spindles
• Valve bodies
• And more

If you’re curious about whether your component is ideal for CNC milling centers, reach out to our team for more information.

Trust Decades of Precision CNC Milling Expertise for Your Components

At The Mulan-mfg Company, our precision custom machining and milling expertise encompasses more than two decades. Our knowledge of custom CNC milling, as well as our competitive prices and quick turnarounds for not only CNC milling but also painting, fabrication and assembly, make us a respected partner and choice for organizations of every size, including Fortune 500 companies. We’re ISO 9001 certified, too, assuring you of our commitment to exceptional quality and service.

Trust the experience of The Mulan-mfg Company, for all of your precision cnc milling needs. We offer long term solutions for all of your custom machining needs. To learn more contact us today.

At the beginning of 2020, there has been a crazy spread of the horrible new tube virus worldwide, which has had a huge impact on human health and working life. School education has been suspended, manufacturing has stopped busy work, and the service industry has been affected. A huge impact, human life has become imprisoned at home, unable to party, talk, greet or even give a loved one a hug of encouragement, people are hidden behind masks, the fear of the epidemic spread all over the world, shrouded in the dim epidemic under.

In China, the annual Spring Festival is between January and February. People enjoy family reunion and buy holiday gifts for seven minutes. However, due to the impact of the new coronavirus, everyone is hiding in their homes. Do not let yourself get hurt, or let relatives and friends get hurt. In the early stage of the outbreak, the Chinese government issued an official announcement during the most important Spring Festival holiday in China, explaining the severity of the outbreak and how people responded. Everyone is following the government’s call. Read More “2020 Impact of new coronaviruses on Chinese manufacturing”

How fine thread can be called fine thread? Read More “How fine thread can be called fine thread?”

Nemo enim ipsam voluptatem quia voluptas sit aspernatur aut odit aut fugit, sed quia consequuntur magni dolores eos qui ratione voluptatem sequi nesciunt. Neque porro quisquam est, qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, co nsect etur, adipisci velit.