A Guide for All Things Sheet Metal #ManufacturingMonday @Mindtribe
Mindtribe have a good write-up on pointers for working with sheet metal for design for your projects. Topics include punching, lasering, and bending, and also features of sheet metal design like louvers, chamfers and fillets, and “deep draw” (new one for me too).
At a very high level, sheet metal punching is similar to using a hole punch on a piece of paper. A top tool traps the material against an appropriately-shaped bottom tool and pushes through, creating a hole (or other feature). In the case of sheet metal, though, your material is up to a quarter inch of steel, and your hole punch is a multimillion dollar, many ton, high precision piece of machinery.
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, or even use Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for MakeCode, CircuitPython, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell with Google Hangouts On-Air is every Wednesday at 7:30pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
