Ordering sheet materials is similar to ordering an adult beverage. When you name a beverage, you are specifying your expectations for taste and appearance. Meeting your expectations involves selecting the right ingredients, pouring and garnishing, and selecting the right glass for the chosen beverage. Your sheet material order also involves selecting the right ingredients, combining and milling them properly, and employing appropriate processes to meet your requirements for properties and dimensions.

Thinning Strain Analysis (TSA) and Circle Grid Strain Analysis (CGSA) are powerful tools to determine if your forming process and sheet metal choice are sufficiently robust to handle the inherent variations of metal properties. Properly done, TSA and CGSA can offer you valuable insight into the forming capabilities of your seleced sheet metal. Improper technique can lead you to make costly decisions.

We test materials, both to anticipate behaviors during manufacturing and to compare properties among different types and grades. Getting reliable test results requires consistently applied procedures and properly calibrated equipment.

Tensile tests must be conducted using standardized equipment and procedures to ensure accurate and consistent results. To accomplish this, standards organizations publish sheet metal tensile test standards. These standards include:

It is important for the metalforming professional to understand the steelmaking process. The making and rolling of steel determines how the workpiece will behave under forming, how it will respond to stress, and what the metal's strain characteristics will be.

If you’ve ever seen a Road Runner cartoon, you know that Wile E. Coyote tries everything to capture his prey, and often orders materials from the fictitious Acme Corporation. If any of these materials came with a Mill Certification Sheet and the Coyote took the time to read it, he might be spared the spectacular failures of his complex products – and eventually dine on Road Runner.