How To Flatten Warped Sheet Metal

I have this piece of mild steel i use as a template for cutting pieces of paper an odd shape for a special purpose.

How to flatten warped sheet metal.

The best you can hope for with the limited equipment at your disposal is a slightly less warped potentially more lumpy piece of metal now with hours of labor attached to it. My experience with flattening sheet metal hasn t been all that positive in terms of getting it absolutely flat but serious improvements can be made. Put a nice matte finish on the piece but it wasn t flat anymore. The simple act of heating metal during the welding process causes stresses within the steel that often lead to distortion or bending.

First off you need to understand that this is a metal shaping operation. However too much heat can damage the metal. To make the metal straightening process easier fabricators often apply heat. The metal has to do something if there is to much of it.

I don t think the bow is a heat warp i think it s a buckle caused by to much metal at the top caused when the bottom portion of the transom shrunk after the weld cooled. This restraint creates high residual tensile stress that causes the weld to act like a stretched rubber band with the workpiece holding the ends figure 1 for this reason when the clamps that hold the workpiece are removed the base metal is allowed to move or spring. Working with sheel metal. There is no magic technique that will give you a flat piece from wrinkled piece.

7 long 1 wide and 1 8 thick. The weld wants to shrink as it cools to room temperature but is restrained from doing so by the adjacent cold base metal. Roger cook started work for. Over time it has gotten a bit bent out of shape sort of like a sine wave.

If you must have a flat piece you should just buy a new flat piece. You re on the money about annealing the work it won t straighten it but it will ease your job. Understanding how the metal reacts to these stresses and applying a few simple tricks during the welding process can minimize distortion and bending making your welding process much faster and more efficient. Roger cook explaining how he uses hot and cold to tighten the steel plate to remove heat deformations.

Sheet metal that won t flatten could have had an area of it expanded. Various mechanical forces can straighten the metal back into the proper shape.