How To Flatten Warped Sheet Metal

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.

How to flatten warped sheet metal. The metal has to do something if there is to much of it. However too much heat can damage the metal. When recycling scrap metal and when fixing broken metallic parts technicians and fabricators sometimes need to straighten out metal. 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.

If you must have a flat piece you should just buy a new flat piece. Various mechanical forces can straighten the metal back into the proper shape. Roger cook explaining how he uses hot and cold to tighten the steel plate to remove heat deformations. Over time it has gotten a bit bent out of shape sort of like a sine wave.

I ve tried placing it between pieces of mdf and leaving it in a vise for a couple of days but it just springs back to its shape. 7 long 1 wide and 1 8 thick. Sheet metal that won t flatten could have had an area of it expanded. Put a nice matte finish on the piece but it wasn t flat anymore.

Working with sheel 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. There is no magic technique that will give you a flat piece from wrinkled piece.

Don t know about flattening but i found that sand or bead blasting one side of sheet aluminum will put a bow in the metal bowing toward the blasted side. To make the metal straightening process easier fabricators often apply heat. The weld wants to shrink as it cools to room temperature but is restrained from doing so by the adjacent cold base metal. 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. Roger cook started work for.