Blog: SubCon Manufacturing Part 1

In this series of blogs we take a look at the services we provide for sheet metal engineering.

Expert sheet metal engineering

We’re incredibly proud of our history, having successfully been in business for over 70 years, but more importantly it’s the experience and knowledge we’ve gained over these years that allows us to support our customers to produce their products in a flexible, efficient and cost effective manner.
So. what is it that we do and how can we help you?
Firstly we are experts in sheet metal engineering, we specialise in working with mild steel, stainless steel (also known as Inox) and Aluminium but we can work with other metals where necessary.
We’re here to guide you through the manufacturing process from design, prototyping, through to full scale production whether large or small quantities depending on your needs.

Design

Our team of experienced engineers use the latest Solid Edge software to bring your concepts to life. The team provide design and development capabilities and manufacturing engineering experience to create drawings for your project, or if a drawing already exists they can convert into designs suitable for production.
Within this process we provide regular estimates to ensure projects remain within budget.
We operate the following software:
• Solid Edge for design, simulation and manufacturing profiles
• Sigmanest enables optimal nesting and material utilisation
• Radan for optimised sheet metal cutting
• Trutops provides optimised press brake bending and punch pressing
• BobCAD for programming our CNC machining centres
• Creative Cloud facilitates designs for screen printing and laser etching

Tool Room

As part of our one-stop-shop solution we operate a fully equipped tool room to produce our own small press tools. Our in-house tool room team have the experience to create your profile to your exact needs whilst providing efficiency and flexibility for changes if so needed.
We manufacture our own jigs and fixtures to the requirements of the design providing you with value for money. We believe it’s important to retain this process in house as it enables shorter lead times, lower costs but importantly control of the process from end to end.
Our engineering team also fully maintain our own tools and equipment in house providing you with consistent quality and continuity of supply. Again it is important for us to be in control of the whole process.
So, moving on to our manufacturing capabilities. We operate an extensive plant list. All of which can be viewed here
We’ll start with cutting and pressing:

Flat Bed Laser Cutting

Investment in the latest cutting technology has provided us with superior precision cutting performance and quality edge finishes whilst ensuring reliable and high volume through put. We can work with Stainless Steel (Inox), Steel, Copper, Brass and Aluminium as well as most other exotic metals and alloys.
We operate three flat-bed lasers including one state of the art fibre laser. We can work to a tolerance of 0.1mm on sheets up to 3000mm x 1500mm.
Optimal material usage is achieved using nesting software ensuring minimal waste material and the production plans are downloaded directly in the CNC machines.

Punch Press

As an alternative to laser cutting, punch presses provide a vital metal cutting process, particularly useful where shallow forms or multiple piecing is required.
We can punch up to 6mm thickness of material.

Press Brake

We operate an extensive range of press brakes with seven presses providing the capacity to fold up to 2m wide. The programmes are created from the approved CAD designs and downloaded directly to the machines.

Power Presses

Our plant of eight power-presses range from 25 ton to a massive 400 ton ensuring we can meet any requirements. This also includes a 250 ton hydraulic press and 1 progression press for high volume work.
As mentioned previously all our dedicated hard tooling maintenance is undertaken in house.
So, whatever your requirements are, our team are here to help you and they love to solve a problem!
In the next blog in this series we’ll take a look at the finishing techniques we provide from the welding options, polishing and linishing and the care we take to assemble, clean and inspect prior to packing and despatching.
Read our other blog on what to consider when 'selecting the right Sub Contractor for you'.

Contact us today