How To Straighten Sheet Metal

Aluminum is highly malleable which makes it easy to work with but also easy to accidentally bend.

How to straighten sheet metal.

With the right tools you can easily straighten aluminum yourself rather than spending money on a new piece of metal. Most frequently expensive sheet metal bending tools called brakes are used to bend sheet metal but you can also complete this task without one. But they do remove metal making the panel thin in places and therefore affecting its strength and structure. This means it s a lot easier to flatten.

Slip rolls can also be set to put several different curvatures in the same panel and to flatten distorted metal. Bending sheet metal by hand is a manageable task if the piece of sheet metal is small and thin enough to handle. While i could leave it as is i d sure like to straighten it out somehow. This is really easy especially with a flattening tool.

However it will deform the sides of the metal. When straightening pipes fabricators sometimes fill the pipes with fine grained sand and close the ends of the pipes. The reason for this is that metal tends to stretch when it is bent. The metal in the included picture looks relatively small.

If you do inadvertently bend a piece of aluminum don t assume it is ruined and throw it away. 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. My latest acquisition has some bent and wrinkled sheet metal especially the grille.

Smaller scale pulling is commonly performed to remove dents where most of the displaced metal is locked out of position by a very small area of metal and where access. They impart predictable and continuous curves to sheet metal. 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. In order to counteract this stretch you have to be able to shrink the metal back to its original position.

Body files are usually used after another age old process has been used to straighten. 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.