Ferrier Wire and Design Metals offers a wide variety of wire mesh (weavemesh and weldmesh), perforated metals (design and round hole pattern) and expanded metals for use in a wide variety of industrial, architectural and design applications. Please contact us to see if we can assist you with your requirements and or would be interested being the subject of a blog post.
Manufacturing Spotlight: How We Shear to Size
At Ferrier Wire we offer a variety of options to shear material to size for customers. We have the following machinery available:
48” wide gang slitting machine
60” wide flattening rollers
48” wide power shear
10” wide power shear
Plasma cutter
Variety of electric hand power shears
Two heavy duty guillotine’s for finer mesh
Shearing design and architectural material to size:
When working with these materials, great care is taken to make sure that the pattern is centred. For example, at opposite ends of each piece the pattern looks the same and is aligned - if there is a common dimension, we make sure that the pattern aligns so that when pieces are beside each other, the pattern is the same. The design and architectural material must be sheared to size before it is sent out to be finished (plated or powder coated). If finished material is sheared to size, the lacquer and finish risk being damaged.
The heavier mesh must first be fed through our rollers to flatten out the natural curve of the roll. It is important to note that while we endeavour to get the mesh as flat a possible, quite often it is impossible to completely flatten the material.
Once the mesh has been flattened, we use our shears: they can be electric hand powered or otherwise, depending on the product and cutting criteria. When cutting woven mesh to size, it is important to ensure the material is cut in between wires and not across wires for the nicest result.
Our gang slitter allows us to take lighter mesh rolls: examples include hardware cloth and insect screens up to 48” wide. We can slit them down to narrower coils (down to 2” wide). This greatly reduces the time it takes to cut long strips of material. In addition, for higher volume industrial and commercial projects, the slitting machine greatly reduces the amount of labour required to cut pieces to size.
The plasma cutter is an economical method to cut heavier materials where the tolerance is not critical - for example, material that will be mounted into a frame leaving no edges exposed.
Please contact us if you have any questions about our shearing capabilities or for a quote. For a quote, please specify the material, size(s), quantities and if it is a regularly occurring requirement. Please note that we only shear and cut our own material to size.
IMAGES:
#1 - 48" shear
#2 - 48" shear
#3 - 120" shear
#4 - 120" shear
#5 - 120" shear
#6 - Electric metal shear
#7 - Electric metal shear