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Laser cutting serves the economic, precise and fast "cutting" of workpieces from a sheet metal. For this purpose, a CNC-controlled laser is guided across the sheet metal panel. The laser beam hits the sheet metal and heats it selectively. The strong heat liquefies the metal at the specified points and thus ensures separation at the cutting edges.

Laser cutting can also be used economically with small batch sizes, enabling maximum material utilization and thus reducing waste, and offers cutting edges that do not require reworking. When it comes to cutting parts from a sheet metal without contact or force, laser cutting has become indispensable in production. Without even a single tool change, virtually any shape can be cut with a laser. The cutting edges are free from rework. In addition to sheet metal, almost any material can be cut by laser - whether it is ceramic, metal, plastic or organic material. Some disadvantages of laser cutting are: The required laser devices are cost-intensive to purchase, and the application is only suitable for thinner sheets up to a thickness of approx. 260 mm.

During water jet cutting in sheet metal processing, the sheet metal to be processed is separated by a high-pressure water jet and the admixture of cutting sand. The sheets are processed with up to 6000 bar working pressure, at the same time the sheet hardly heats up.

During water jet cutting, there is no thermal stress on the workpiece, so that almost any sheet metal can be cut with this process. The advantages of this process lie in the narrow cutting kerf width, excellent material utilization with high nesting density and correspondingly low waste as well as low environmental impact. In addition, water jet cutting is characterized by a high cutting edge quality, for which manual reworking is only necessary in rare cases. The comparatively low cutting speed and the direct contact with water - which makes water jet cutting of moisture-sensitive or rust-prone materials more difficult - can be considered disadvantageous.

During plasma cutting of sheet metal, an electrically conductive gas - plasma - is generated by means of an electric arc. The extremely high energy of the arc melts the metal at the desired location, and at the same time the molten metal is blown away by a gas jet, creating a kerf.

The advantages of this process lie in the high cutting speeds and low heat distortion. In addition to sheet metal processing, plasma can cut though most known metals, which significantly expands the areas of application. The acquisition costs for plasma torches are lower than for a laser machine, but lasers with a material thickness of 15 mm or more work faster.

During punching, components are manufactured from a sheet metal using a press and a corresponding cutting tool. This tool consists of a die and a punch, which produces the internal shape of the components.

The sheet metal is placed between the die and the punch for punching; the press presses the two parts together, and thus punches the workpiece out of the sheet metal. Punching is considered to be an extremely fast, inexpensive process, but primarily for series production. For each punched component, a separate tool must be produced, which significantly increases the price for single parts or small series. Short times and high precision of the stamped parts are also among the advantages of this process. In addition to the high tool costs, the burr caused by the punching process and uneven cutting surfaces, which make post-processing necessary, can also be considered disadvantageous.

Nibbling is another process for sheet metal processing and is closely related to punching. In nibbling, the workpiece is punched out of the sheet metal, piece by piece, through a repeated up and down movement of the tool, open on one side and with uniform feed. Cut-outs from the sheet metal can be produced without distortion by nibbling, but the cutting track punched out of the sheet metal results in greater waste compared to other processes. Nibbling makes it possible to produce even more complex shape workpieces. Nibbling also produces a burr on the parts, which must be removed after production.

CNC bending is one of the forming processing options for sheet metal. For CNC bending, the sheets are guided around a roller to produce radii. If sharp edges at a precisely predefined angle are required, sheets are bent. With the combination of CNC bending and folding, high-precision solids can be produced from sheet metal.

CNC-assisted manufacturing minimizes the error rate of bent parts, making CNC bending a convincingly efficient and cost-effective manufacturing process.

According to DIN 8584, deep drawing is the "tensile pressure forming of a sheet blank". For this purpose, the sheet is clamped on a press between the punch and die of the tool. It is important in deep drawing that the edges of the punch and die are rounded to allow the sheet to flow. Deep drawing is one of the tension forming processes in which a sheet is formed without changing the sheet thickness.

Deep drawing is considered a cost-effective, fast process - even when it comes to individual parts, prototypes or small series. Depending on the tooling required, the cost of parts produced by deep drawing is up to 60% lower than that of other manufacturing processes.