Am I the only one who spent 5 hours on a flat pattern that should have taken 1?

I was working on a sheet metal duct piece for a commercial job in Austin last week. Usually I can rough out a flat pattern in maybe an hour, but this one with all the weird transition angles just kept coming out wrong. After 5 hours of rechecking my math and adjusting the bend allowances, I finally realized my CAD program had the wrong material thickness set for 16 gauge. Has anyone else had a simple job turn into a whole day because of a tiny setting you overlooked?

2 comments

2 Comments

ruby49421d ago

You ever get that feeling where you're so deep in a problem you forget to check the simple stuff first? @cooper.reese man I feel your pain, I once spent half a day on a transition piece before realizing I had my calculator in degrees instead of radians. Doesn't make you feel any less dumb though.

cooper.reese21d ago

Three years ago I spent a full Saturday trying to lay out a simple 90 degree elbow for some residential ductwork. I was about to throw my tape measure through the wall when I noticed my brake press had a .020 inch offset I forgot to account for in my flat pattern math. That tiny little decimal point turned a two hour job into an eight hour headache. The worst part was I had already cut the metal twice before I caught it, so I wasted material too. It's amazing how one little number can mess up everything you do in this trade.