The fabrication department

Metal folding

Metal bending and folding on our range of press brakes is something we’ve been doing since the early days, and it’s one of the areas where we truly excel.

We’ve supplied quality metal formed and folded products for a range of industries including marine engineering, shop fitting, railway maintenance and many more.

Our machines feature both manual and CNC control; and our experienced operators are well versed in all metal bending, folding and forming techniques.  The latest addition is our 170t press brake, which can handle sheet material up to 3m wide.

Our first-off and in-process inspection ensures all your products are consistently of the highest quality.

Our metal bending and forming work is the perfect complement to our other services such as laser cutting, welding and finishing. It all means that we really can provide a one-stop shop for all your metalwork requirements.

Metal Tube Bending

With a wide variety of machines and processes available at our Plymouth factory for tube bending and cutting, we can produce truly distinctive metal tube creations.

Metal tube cutting and tube bending is about manipulating standard steel tube sections into intricate shapes and designs – and the results can be impressively striking!

Using our circular saws and bandsaw, we can produce straight or angled cuts in metal sections with thicknesses up to 250mm diameter (straight) or 100mm (angled) in nearly all metal types. We can also cater for unusual geometric sections.

This standard process is a mainstay of many of our current products, and ensures high accuracy and repeatability, as well as providing a firm starting point to begin your product’s manufacturing development.

For metal tube rolling and bar rolling we have a variety of rolling and pipe bending machines and jigs that can satisfy your product specifications.  If we don’t have the size you need, we can make the tooling to suit.

We have bent metal tubes and put any subsequent radii into everything from 5mm bar to scaffolding poles!  The time-served operatives at our Plymouth factory can give you the rolled components you require for the perfect curved tubular parts and assemblies.

Our tube bending services include steel tube bending, aluminium tube bending and stainless steel tube bending.

Welding

Welding is a vital part of our metal fabrication service here at Aldermans in Plymouth.  We have a dedicated team of welders with vast experience, who deliver welded parts and assemblies consistently to a very high standard.

No job is too small or large. Here at Aldermans we have welded everything from very small precision automotive components to large-scale luxury yacht fittings!

We undertake MIG, TIG and Brazing, as well as Stud and Spot welding to suit every requirement, depending on your preference for parameters such as surface finish and price point.

We can weld aluminium, stainless steel and mild steel.

Plates from 1-10mm thickness and tube from 5-80mm diameter can be welded easily, plus bar thickness and angle to your specification.

The fabrication team can work to tolerances from +/-1mm to +/-0.2mm depending on the application, providing exceptional quality and repeatability.

Powder coating

Our in-house powder coating service at our Plymouth factory ensures products are finished to the highest quality – and there’s a myriad of colours and styles to choose from!

Powder coating is suitable for almost any product and provides a high quality, beautiful and uniform finish with no paint run even on complex shapes like castings. It can be applied to steel, zinc, brass and aluminium.

The electrostatic powder process protects against external ultra-violet fading, corrosion and abrasion from acids and solvents. It also provides excellent electrical insulation capabilities.

Materials for powder coating are firstly cleaned and, if necessary, abraded. Our expert technicians then apply a conversion coating if required, before adding the powder and then baking it on in the oven at 180 degrees celsius.

We can apply multiple layers of powder to provide further protection.

Powder coating is suitable for any metal that conducts electricity and can take the high temperature bake cycle. 

Materials that might encounter highly corrosive environments need to be made from stainless steel or galvanised and can then be powdered on top. And while materials that don’t conduct electricity can’t be coated, we can apply a conductive coating instead.

Our powder coating is available in all RAL colours, a selection of BS colours, metallics, special effect candy colours, textured, matte, satin, gloss, iridescence, stars, leatherette.

Powder coating is a cost-effective way of achieving a durable, high quality finish on a range of products, even on small batches or single items.

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