Sheet Metal Fabrication Quoting: Flat Blanks & Bend Allowance, Nesting & Material Utilisation, Laser Cut Time, Press Brake Time & Batch Pricing

What you'll build

What you will be able to do

Each lab ends with a concrete result that you build yourself and the checker confirms, cell by cell.

• Look up a fictional K-factor from each bracket's radius-to-thickness ratio, calculate the bend allowance with RADIANS and add it to the straight legs to get the flat blank length the laser has to cut.
• Work from drawings that dimension the outside of each flange: you calculate the outside setback with TAN, the bend deduction per bend and the flat length of channels and brackets, and prove that both methods give the same blank.
• Calculate each blank's gross and net area, subtract the punched or cut holes with PI, turn the net area into a weight with a density lookup and price the material per part on the whole blank.
• Fit rectangular blanks onto a standard sheet in rows and columns, try the rotated layout, keep the better one, round the number of sheets up and measure how much of the bought metal ends up in parts.
• Measure the cut length of each part from its outline and holes, add the pierce time for every contour, convert it into minutes with fictional speeds by thickness and price the time at the machine's hourly rate.
• Build each batch's press brake time from setups and bends, see how a fixed setup is spread over small and large batches and find the batch size at which the setup share falls to a target.
• Price the work after cutting and bending: coating by the square metre with a minimum batch charge, pressed-in inserts with their labour, and packaging by the box, and add the extras per part.
• Combine the per-part costs from labs 3–7 with the fixed batch costs, add overhead and margin, price one bracket at 1, 10, 100 and 1,000 parts and chart how the price per part flattens as the batch grows.