Notches. Those little incisions cut into the edge of a sheet of metal to help with the folding process. A lot of parts call out for a notch or two, and you have to be able to handle these operations with speed and accuracy. Generally speaking, if you’re in the fabrication business then you have probably made a notch somewhere along the way.
If you don't have a dedicated notcher in your arsenal, how would you make a notch in metal?
There’s more than a couple ways to make a notch, and none of those methods come close to the speed and accuracy of making that notch with a dedicated notching machine. Let’s examine a couple of the most probable methods out there, to see how they stand up to notching the right way. (By the way, do these other methods know what they're up against? With a notching machine, you place the part into the jig, flip the clamps, hit the “go” button, hear a muffled sound from the machine, pull out your part because it’s done.)
So anyway, let’s examine milling the notch with, say, a roughing end mill on a decent Bridgeport style knee mill. Again, this time the piece must be securely clamped to the table in a fixture that holds the entire part. Then you chuck up, say, a ½" roughing end mill, check the speed chart for the correct rotational speed. If you don’t have an automatic CNC controlled Bridgeport machine then you manually maneuver the mill to the piece. (If, by chance, you do have a CNC controlled Bridgeport machine, guess what? You're gonna run it manually anyway, because it would take longer to program the notch, than to just run it manually.)
That’s milling, what’s the second most popular way to create a notch without a notcher? It’s trying to drill a half of a hole. You get this one right, or it blows up the twist drill trying to cut through only a half a circle of sheet metal. After that nightmare, you still probably need to clean up the semi-circle with a hand grinder anyway.
Both methods are time-consuming and we’re comparing these to a notcher? Folks, a notcher — a hydraulically powered sheet metal notcher with high-speed steel blades — with such a machine you press the pedal and your part is done!
Sheet metal notchers come in a variety of configurations and capabilities. With our offering of sheet metal notchers at Bud's Machine Tools, we try to cover as broad a range of differing capabilities as we can in notching machines.
As with any machine tool we have here at Bud's, our sheet metal notchers are of the highest quality currently available on the market. On our powered notchers all safety considerations have been met with full finger guarding and electrical componentry up to current industrial standards.
We feature an all electric/hydraulic sheet metal notcher, with 115-volt power that only draws one amp. The machine has a capacity of a 3-inch radii with optional blades and comes standard with 11 sizes ranging from 1/8" to 1".
One item grouped with our sheet metal notchers has nothing to do with sheet metal: an angle iron notcher (we thought it made sense to keep all the notchers together). This angle iron notcher is a sturdy, cast iron piece that is hand operated, and will do 90° notching in heavy angle iron. The notcher weighs 55 pounds and can be portable to the job site.
To round out our line of sheet metal notchers, we have a broad classification of simple bench notchers. These machines are hand-operated and can do a variety of notching work. These machines generally can be bench mounted or in many cases portable. All bench notchers have ground tables with replaceable blades and complete finger guards. These convenient machines can, of course, notch. But they can also cope, conduct dovetailing, box forming, and corner shearing, and do so for sheet metal, angle iron and flat stock.
We would be remiss if we didn’t mention the fact that we also handle hand sheet metal notchers. Described as “portable notchers,” these hand tools are specifically designed to conduct hand notching operations. Available for either 45° or 90° they come complete with spring return jaws.
You can get all these notchers — and most any other kind of fabrication machine — from Bud's Machine Tools, located in Salt Lake City, Utah. Call or email us for recommendations, we will reply in short order and get you the proper solution to your needs.
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