Metal Fabrication Project – Top Design Tips

When considering a metal fabrication project, it’s important to ensure that your fabricator can translate your design into your desired product with ease. To make things easier for your fabricator and ensure the best results, there are certain factors to consider. We’ve put together some top tips to help optimise your design.

Provide sufficient information when requesting a quote

When seeking a quote for your metal fabrication project, it’s important to supply as much information as you can. The more details you can provide the more accurate the costs should be. Things to include are shop-ready drawings, engineering drawings, technical specifications, plans and profiles, the address of your site, the name of the person to contact, the date you need it by and anything else that comes to mind.

Metal Fabrication Project – Involve your fabricator from the outset

By getting your fabricator involved from the earliest possible time, you’ll be able to ensure that your designs are achievable. Any designs that are non-optimal or unrealistic means going back to the drawing board and this will cost more time and money. By getting your fabricator involved in the early planning stages, they can suggest minor alterations or alternatives to ensure your design is fabrication friendly.

Forget unnecessary details

While it’s important to bear in mind the details when creating your design, over-loading it with unnecessary intricacies will simply cloud it. If your fabricator has trouble in deciphering your design, it will end up costing you more and set back the production date.

Test before production

There are times in life when designs that look brilliant on paper fail in the real world simply because they don’t translate that well from the theory. Your metal fabricator should be able to provide you with prototypes and 3D models which will allow you to test out your design before going to production with your metal fabrication project.

Choose your materials carefully

When designing a product for metal fabrication project, there are plenty of materials to choose from. Not only will your choice of metal affect the practicality of the product, but the efficiency and the production cost too. Ask your fabricator for suggestions before deciding on the metal to use as they will have a better understanding of a metal that’s most suitable and will help to achieve the best results.

Choose a fabricator that ‘gets’ you

It’s important when choosing your metal fabricator that you have a good relationship with them. You need someone who understands your vision and intents and can translate your designs in any form. To ensure that the directions are followed to the letter your fabricator should be up to speed on all relevant engineering design languages.

It’s crucial to do your research when looking for a metal fabricator since not all companies are created equal. The team at Metro Steel have years of experience and have honed their skills across the board to deliver quality products and measurable bottom lines to our customers. Why not get in touch with us today to discuss your metal fabrication project.